Anhang: Ergänzende und vertiefende Materialien

zu

Die drawidische Anti-Brahmanen/Anti-Sanskrit-Bewegung

Gastvortrag an der Universität Würzburg am 2021-11-30

von

Alois Payer


Zitierweise:

Payer, Alois <1944 - >: Anhang: Ergänzende und vertiefende Materialien zu: Die drawidische Anti-Brahmanen/Anti-Sanskrit-Bewegung. -- URL: http://www.payer.de/indienchronik/wuerzburg.htm 

Anhang zu: Payer, Alois <1944 - >: Die drawidische Anti-Brahmanen/Anti-Sanskrit-Bewegung. -- URL: http://www.payer.de/indienchronik/drawid.htm

Erstveröffentlichung: 2021-12-01

Überarbeitungen:

Copyright: Creative Commons Lizenz - Verfasserangabe - Weitergabe unter gleichen Bedingungen (CC-BY-SA 3.0)


Diese Materialsammlung ist gedacht als Reader zum genannten Gastvortrag.


1864-04

Es erscheint:

Philip Sclater (1829 - 1913): The Mammals of Madagascar. -- In: Quarterly Journal of Science, vol. 1, April 1864. -- S. 213 - 219. -- Online: The quarterly journal of science : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

"THE MAMMALS OF MADAGASCAR.

By P. L. Sclater, M.A., Ph.D., F.R.S.. Secretary of the Zoological Society of London.

Organic beings are not scattered broadcast over the earth's surface without regularity or arrangement, as the casual observer might suppose, nor are they distributed according to the variations of climate or of any other physical external agent, although the latter have, unquestionably, much influence in modifying their forms. But each species (or assemblage of similar individuals), whether of the animal or vegetable kingdom, is found to occupy a certain definite and continuous geographical area on the earth. In like manner, each genus, or assemblage of species, each family, or assemblage of genera, and each order, or assemblage of families, may be said to be subject to similar laws, as regards its geographical distribution,—although, as might have been supposed, the areas occupied by the higher groups are usually larger, and in some eases co-extensive with the earth's surface.

It thus happens that the various parts of the world are characterized by possessing special groups of animals and vegetables, and that, as a general rule, such tracts of land as are most nearly contiguous have their Faunae and Florae most nearly resembling one another: while, vice versa, those that are farthest asunder are inhabited by most different forms of animal and vegetable life. When any exception to this rule occurs, and two adjacent lands possess dissimilar forms, or two regions far apart exhibit similar forms, it is the task of the student of geographical distribution to give some reason why this has come about, and so to make the “exception prove the rule.”

In the present paper I propose to devote a short space to the examination of one of the best known and strangest of these anomalies in geographical distribution—namely, that presented to us by the Fauna of the Island of Madagascar. Madagascar being immediately contiguous to the eastern coast of Africa, and separated from it by a channel in one place only some 200 miles across, in which, moreover, there are several intermediate islands, while it is very far removed from India and America, ought, according to generally-received rules, to exhibit a Fauna of a purely African type. But this, as is well known to naturalists, is not the case. The numerous Mammals of the orders Ruminantia [Wiederkäuer], Pachydermata [Dickhäuter], and Proboscides [Rüsseltiere], so characteristic of the Aethiopian Fauna, are entirely absent from Madagascar. The same is the case with the larger species of Carnivora [Raubtiere], which are found throughout the African continent, but do not extend into Madagascar. Again, the highly-organized types of Quadrumana, which prevail in the forests of the mainland, are utterly wanting in the neighbouring island, their place lining there occupied by several genera of the inferior family of Lemurs. In the like manner, I shall lie able to show that similar irregularities prevail to a greater or lesser extent in every other part of the series of Mammals, and that, in short, the anomalies presented to us by the forms of life prevalent in this island arc so striking, that claims have been put forward in its favour to be considered as a distinct primary geographical region of the earth.

[Es folgen die Belege für die aufgestellten Behauptungen]

The following deductions may, perhaps, be arrived at from what we have before us :—

  1. Madagascar has never been connected with Africa, as it at present exists. This would seem probable from the absence of certain all-pervading Aethiopian types in Madagascar, such as Antilope, Hippopotamus, Felis, &c. But, on the other hand, the presence of Lemurs in Africa renders it certain that Africa, as it at present exists, contains land that once formed part of Madagascar.
     
  2. Madagascar and the Mascarene Islands (which are universally acknowledged to belong to the same category) must have remained for a long epoch separated from every other part of the globe, in order to have acquired the many peculiarities now exhibited in their Mammal fauna e.g. Lemur, Chiromys [Fingertier], Eupleres [Madagassische Raubtiere], Centetes [Tenrek], &c.—to be elaborated by the gradual modification of pre-existing forms.
     
  3. Some land-connection must have existed in former ages between Madagascar and India, whereon the original stock, whence the present Lemuridae of Africa, Madagascar, and India are descended, flourished.
     
  4. It must bo likewise allowed that some sort of connection must also have existed between Madagascar and land which now forms part of the New World in order to permit the derivation of the Centetinae from a common stock with the Solendon [Schlitzrüssler], account for the fact that the Lemuridae, as a body, are  certainly more nearly allied to the weaker forms of American monkeys than to any of the Simiidae [Affen] of the Old World.

To conclude, therefore, granted the hypothesis of the derivative origin of species, the anomalies of the Mammal fauna of Madagascar can best be explained by supposing that, anterior to the existence of Africa in its present shape, a large continent occupied parts of the Atlantic and Indian Ocean stretching out towards (what is now) America on the west, and to India and its islands on the east ; that this continent was broken up into islands, of which some became amalgamated with the present continent of Africa, and some possibly with what is now Asia—and that in Madagascar and the Mascarene Islands we have existing relics of this great continent, for which as the original focus of the “ Stirps Lemurum,'' I should propose the name Lemuria !"

[a.a.O., S. 213f. ; 218f.]

1870

Berlin: Es erscheint:

Ernst Haeckel (1834 - 1919): Natürliche Schöpfungsgeschichte : Gemeinverständliche wissenschaftliche Vorträge über die Entwickelungslehre im Allgemeinen und diejenige von Darwin, Goethe und Lamarck im Besonderen. -- 2., verm. Auf. -- Berlin : Weimar, 1870

1873 erscheint eine englische Übersetzung unter dem Titel:

Ernst Haeckel (1834 - 1919): : The history of creation : or the development of the earth and its inhabitants by the action of natural causes: a popular exposition of the doctrine of evolution in general and of that of Darwin, Goethe and Lamarck in particular. -- New York : Aplleton, 1873

In der englischen Übersetzung von 1880 wird die Karte "Hypothetical sketch of the monophyletic origin and the extension of the 12 races of man from Lemuria over the earth" so erklärt:

"Plate XV. (After page 369, Vol. II.)

Hypothetical Sketch of the Monophyletic Origin and the Diffusion of the Twelve Species of Men from Lemuria over the earth.

The hypothesis here geographically sketched of course only claims an entirely provisional value, as in the present imperfect state of our anthropological knowledge it is simply intended to show how the distribution of the human species, from a single primaeval home, may be approximately indicated. The probable primaeval home, or “ Paradise,” is here assumed to be Lemuria, a tropical continent at present lying below the level of the Indian Ocean, the former existence of which in the tertiary period seems very probable from numerous facts in animal and vegetable geography. (Compare vol. i. p. 361, and vol. ii. p. 315.) But it is also very possible that the hypothetical “ cradle of the human race ” lay further to the east (in Hindostan or Further India), or further to the west (in eastern Africa). Future investigations, especially in comparative anthropology and palaeontology, will, it is to be hoped, enable us to determine the probable position of the primaeval home of man more definitely than it is possible to do at present.

If in opposition to our monophyletic hypothesis, the polyphyletic hypothesis—which maintains the origin of the different human species from several different species of anthropoid ape—be preferred and adopted, then, from among the many possible hypotheses which arise, the one deserving most confidence seems to be that which assumes a double pithecoid root for the human race namely, an Asiatic and an African root. For it is a very remarkable fact, that the African man-like apes (gorilla and chimpanzee) are characterized by a distinctly long-headed, or. dolichocephalous, form of skull, like the human species peculiar to Africa (Hottentots, Caffres, Negroes, Nubians). On the other hand, the Asiatic man-like apes (especially the small and large orang), by their distinct, short-headed, or brachycephalous, form of skull agree with human species especially characteristic of Asia (Mongols and Malays). Hence, one might be tempted to derive the latter (the Asiatic man-like apes and primaeval men) from a common form of brachycephalous ape, and the former (the African man-like apes and primeeval men) from a common dolichocephalous form of ape.

In any case, tropical Africa and southern Asia (and between them Lemuria, which formerly connected them) are those portions of the earth which deserve the first consideration in the discussion as to the primaeval home of the human race; America and Australia are, on the other hand, entirely excluded from it. Even Europe (which is in fact but a western peninsula of Asia) is scarcely of any importance in regard to the “ Paradise question.”

It is self-evident that the migrations of the different human species from their primaeval home, and their geographical distribution, could on our Plate XV. be indicated only in a very general way, and in the roughest lines. The numerous migrations of the many branches and tribes in all directions, as well as the very important re-migrations, had to be entirely disregarded. In order to make these latter in some degree clear, our knowledge would, in the first place, need to be much more complete, and secondly, we should have to make use of an atlas with a number of plates showing the various migrations. Our Plate XV. claims no more than to indicate, in a very general way, the approximate geographical dispersion of the twelve human species as it existed in the fifteenth century (before the general diffusion of the Indo-Germanic race), and as it can be sketched out approximately, so as to harmonize with our hypothesis of descent. The geographical barriers to diffusion (mountains, deserts, rivers, straits, etc.), have not been taken into consideration in this general sketch of migration, because, in earlier periods of the earth’s history, they were quite different in size and form from what they arc to-day. The gradual transmutation of catarrhine apes into pithecoid men probably took place in the tertiary period in the hypothetical Lemuria, and the boundaries and forms of the present continents and oceans must then have been completely different from what they are now. Moreover, the mighty influence of the ice period is of great importance in the question of the migration and diffusion of the human species, although it as yet cannot be more accurately defined in detail. I here, therefore, as in my other hypotheses of development, expressly guard myself against any dogmatic interpretation; they arc nothing but first attempts."

[Quelle: The history of creation, or, The development of the earth and its inhabitants by the action of natural causes : a popular exposition of the doctrine of evolution in general, and of that of Darwin, Goethe and Lamarck in particular : Haeckel, Ernst Heinrich Philipp August, 1834-1919 : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive. -- S. 399ff.]

Haeckels Ausführungen zu Lemuria lauten in der englischen Übersetzung von 1880 so:

"In now turning to the equally interesting and difficult question of the relative connection, migration, and primaeval home of the twelve species of men, I must premise the remark that, in the present state of our anthropological knowledge, any answer to this question must be regarded only as a provisional hypothesis. This is much the same as with any genealogical hypothesis which we may form of the origin of kindred animal and vegetable species, on the basis of the “Natural System.” But the necessary uncertainty of these special hypotheses of descent, in no way shakes the absolute certainty of the general theory of descent. Man, we may feel certain, is descended from Catarrhini, or narrow-nosed apes, whether we agree with the polyphylites, and suppose each human species, in its primaeval home, to have originated out of a special kind of ape; or whether, agreeing with the monophylites, we suppose that all the human species arose only by differentiation from a single species of primaeval man (Homo primigenius).

For many and weighty reasons we hold the monophyletic hypothesis to be the more correct, and we therefore assume a single primaeval home for mankind, where he developed out of a long since extinct anthropoid species of ape. Of the five now existing continents, neither Australia, nor America, nor Europe can have been this primaeval home, or the so-called “Paradise,” the “cradle of the human race.”

Most circumstances indicate southern Asia as the locality in question. Besides southern Asia, the only other of the now existing continents which might be viewed in this light is Africa. But there are a number of circumstances (especially chorological facts) which suggest that the primaeval home of man was a continent now sunk below the surface of the Indian Ocean, which extended along the south of Asia, as it is at present (and probably in direct connection with it), towards the cast, as far as further India and the Sunda Islands; towards the west, as far as Madagascar and the south-eastern shores of Africa. We have already mentioned that many facts in animal and vegetable geography render the former existence of such a south Indian continent very probable. (Compare vol. i. p. 361.) Sclater has given this continent the name of Lemuria, from the Semi-apes which were characteristic of it. By assuming this Lemuria to have been man’s primaeval home, we greatly facilitate the explanation of the geographical distribution of the human species by migration. (Compare the Table of Migrations XV., and its explanation at the end.)

We as yet know of no fossil remains of the hypothetical primaeval man (Homo primigenius) who developed out of anthropoid apes during the tertiary period, either in Lemuria or in southern Asia, or possibly in Africa. But considering the extraordinary resemblance between the lowest woolly-haired men, and the highest man-like apes, which still exist at the present day, it requires but a slight stretch of the imagination to conceive an intermediate form connecting the two, and to see in it an approximate likeness to the supposed primaeval men, or ape-like men. The form of their skull was probably very long, with slanting teeth; their hair woolly; the colour of their skin dark, of a brownish tint The hair covering the whole body was probably thicker than in any of the still living human species; their arms comparatively longer and stronger; their legs, on the other hand, knock-kneed, shorter and thinner, with entirely undeveloped calves; their walk but half erect.

This ape-like man very probably did not as yet possess an actual human language, that is, an articulate language of ideas. Human speech, as has already been remarked, most likely originated after the divergence of the primaeval species of men into different species. The number of primaeval languages is, however, considerably larger than the number of the species of men above discussed. For philologists have hitherto not been able to trace the four primaeval languages of the Mediterranean species, namely, the Basque, Caucasian, Semitic, and Indo-Germanic to a single primaeval language. As little can the different Negro languages be derived from a common primaeval language; hence both these species, Mediterranean and Negro, are certainly polyglottonic, that is, their respective languages originated after the divergence of the speechless primary species into several races had already taken place. Perhaps the Mongols, the Arctic and American tribes, are likewise polyglottonic. The Malayan species is, however, mono-glottonic; all the Polynesian and Sundanesian dialects and languages can be derived from a common, long since extinct primaeval language, which is not related to any other language on earth. All the other human species, Nubians, Dravidas, Australians, Papuans, Hottentots, and Kaffres are likewise monoglottonic. (Compare p. 333.)

Out of speechless primaeval man, whom we consider as the common primary species of all the others, there developed in the first place—probably by natural selection— various species of men unknown to us, and now long since extinct, and who still remained at the stage of speechless ape-men (Alalus, or Pithecanthropus). Two of these species, a woolly-haired and a straight-haired, which were most strongly divergent, and consequently overpowered the others in the struggle for life, became the primary forms of the other remaining human species.

The main branch of woolly-haired men (Ulotrichi) at first spread only over the southern hemisphere, and then emigrated partly eastwards, partly westwards. Remnants of the eastern branch are the Papuans in New Guinea and Melanesia, who in earlier times were diffused much further west (in further India and Sundanesia), and it was not until a late period that they were driven eastwards by the Malays. The Hottentots are the but little changed remnants of the western branch; they immigrated to their present home from the north-east. It was perhaps during this migration that the two nearly related species of Caffres and Negroes branched off from them; but it may be that they owe their origin to a peculiar branch of ape-like men.

The second main branch of primaeval straight-haired men (Lissotrichi), which is more capable of development, has probably left a but little changed remnant of its common primary form—which migrated to the south-east—in the ape-like natives of Australia. Probably very closely related to these latter are the South Asiatic primaeval Malays, or Promalays, which name we have previously given to the extinct, hypothetical primary form of the other six human species. Out of this unknown common primary form there seem to have arisen three diverging branches, namely, the true Malays, the Mongols, and the Euplocomi; the first spread to the east, the second to the north, and the third westwards.

The primaeval home, or the “ Centre of Creation,” of the Malays must be looked for in the south-eastern part of the Asiatic continent, or possibly in the more extensive continent which existed at the time when further India was directly connected with the Sunda Archipelago and eastern Lemuria. From thence the Malays spread towards the south-east, over the Sunda Archipelago as far as Borneo, then wandered, driving the Papuans before them, eastwards towards the Samoa and Tonga Islands, and thence gradually diffused over the whole of the islands of the southern Pacific, to the Sandwich Islands in the north, the Mangareva in the east, and New Zealand in the south. A single branch of the Malayan tribe was driven far westwards and peopled Madagascar.

The second main branch of primaeval Malays, that is, the Mongols, at first also spread in Southern Asia, and, radiating to the east, north, and north-west, gradually peopled the greater part of the Asiatic continent. Of the four principal races of the Mongol species, the Indo-Chinese must perhaps be looked upon as the primary group, out of which at a later period the other Coreo-Japanese and Ural-Altaian races developed as diverging branches. The Mongols migrated in many ways from western Asia into Europe, where the species is still represented in northern Russia and Scandinavia by the Fins and Lapps, in Hungary by the kindred Magyars, and in Turkey by the Osmanlis.

On the other hand, a branch of the Mongols migrated from north-eastern Asia to America, which was probably in earlier times connected with the former continent by a broad isthmus. The Arctic tribes, or Polar men, the Hyperboreans of north-eastern Asia, and the Esquimaux [Eskimos] of the extreme north of America, must probably be regarded as an offshoot of this branch, which became peculiarly degenerated by unfavourable conditions of existence. The principal portion of the Mongolian immigrants, however, migrated to the south, and gradually spread over the whole of America, first over the north, later over South America.

The third and most important main branch of primaeval Malays, the curly-haired races, or Euplocomi, have probably left in the Dravidas of Hindostan and Ceylon, that species of man which differs least from the common primary form of the Euplocomi. The principal portion of the latter, namely, the Mediterranean species, migrated from their primaeval home (Hindostan ?) westwards, and peopled the shores of the Mediterranean, south-western Asia, north Africa, and Europe. The Nubians, in the north-east of Africa, must perhaps be regarded as an offshoot of the primaeval Semitic tribes, who migrated far across central Africa almost to the western shores. The various branches of the Indo-Germanic race have deviated furthest from the common primary form of ape-like men. During classic antiquity and the middle ages, the Romanic branch (the Graeco-Italo-Keltic group), one of the two main branches of the Indo-Germanic species, outstripped all other branches in the career of civilization, but at present the same position is occupied by the Germanic. Its chief representatives are the English and Germans, who are in the present age laying the foundation for a new period of higher mental development, in the recognition and completion of the theory of descent. The recognition of the theory of development and the monistic philosophy based upon it, forms the best criterion for the degree of man’s mental development."

[Quelle: The history of creation, or, The development of the earth and its inhabitants by the action of natural causes : a popular exposition of the doctrine of evolution in general, and of that of Darwin, Goethe and Lamarck in particular : Haeckel, Ernst Heinrich Philipp August, 1834-1919 : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive. -- S. 325 - 332]

1872-12-21  - 1876-05-24

Challenger-Expedition erforscht den Meeresboden (allerdings nicht im Indischen Ozean). Das gibt allen Spekulationen über versunkene Kontinente (Atlantis, Lemuria) Auftrieb

1875

London: Es erscheint:

Robert_Caldwell (1814 - 1891): A Comparative Grammar of the Dravidian or South-Indian Family of Languages. -- 2nd ed., revised and enlarged. -- London : Trübner, 1875. -- 608 S. -- Online: A comparative grammar of the Dravidian or South-Indian family of languages : Caldwell, Robert : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

"In preparing the second edition of this book, as in preparing the first, I have endeavoured to give European scholars, whether resident in Europe or in India, such information respecting the Dravidian languages as might be likely to be interesting to them. I have thought more, however, of the requirements of the natives of the country, than of those of foreigners. It has been my earnest and constant desire to stimulate the natives of the districts in which the Dravidian languages are spoken to take an intelligent interest in the comparative study of their own languages; and I trust it will be found that this object has in some measure been helped forward. Educated Tamilians have studied Tamil—educated Telugus have studied Telugu—the educated classes in each language-district have studied the language and literature of that district—with an earnestness and assiduity which are highly creditable to them, and which have never been exceeded in the history of any of the languages of the world—except, perhaps, by the earnestness and assiduity with which Sanskrit has been studied by the Brahmans. One result of this long-continued devotion to grammatical studies has been the development of much intellectual acuteness; another result has been the progressive refinement of the languages themselves; and these results have acted and reacted one upon another. Hence, it is impossible for any European who has acquired a competent knowledge of any of the Dravidian languages—say Tamil—to regard otherwise than with respect the intellectual capacity of a people amongst whom so wonderful an organ of thought has been developed. On the other hand, in consequence of the almost exclusive devotion of the native literati to grammatical studies they have fallen considerably behind the educated classes in Europe in grasp and comprehensiveness. What they have gained in acuteness, they have lost in breadth. They have never attempted to compare their own languages with others—not even with other languages of the same family. They have never grasped the idea that such a thing as a family of languages existed. Consequently the interest they took in the study of their languages was not an intelligent, discriminating interest, and proved much less fruitful in results than might fairly have been expected. Their philology, if it can be called by that name, has remained up to our own time as rudimentary and fragmentary as it was ages ago. Not having become comparative, it has not become scientific and progressive. The comparative method of study has done much, in every department of science, for Europe; might it not be expected to do much for India also? If the natives of Southern India began to take an interest in the comparative study of their own languages and in comparative philology in general, they would find it in a variety of ways much more useful to them than the study of the grammar of their own language alone ever has been. They would cease to content themselves with learning by rote versified enigmas and harmonious platitudes. They would begin to discern the real aims and objects of language, and realise the fact that language has a history of its own, throwing light upon all other history, and rendering ethnology and archaeology possible. They would find that philology studied in this manner enlarged the mind instead of cramping it, extended its horizon, and provided it with a plentiful store of matters of wide human interest. And the consequence probably would be that a more critical, scholarly habit of mind, showing itself in a warmer desire for the discovery of truth, would begin to prevail. Another result—not perhaps so immediate, but probably in the end as certain—a result of priceless value—would be the development of a good, readable, respectable, useful, Dravidian literature—a literature written in a style free at once from pedantry and from vulgarisms, and in matter, tone, and tendency, as well as in style, worthy of so intelligent a people as the natives of Southern India undoubtedly are.

I trust the interest taken in their language, literature, and antiquities by foreigners will not be without its effect in kindling amongst the natives of Southern India a little wholesome, friendly rivalry. If a fair proportion of the educated native inhabitants of each district were only to apply themselves to the study of the philology and archaeology of their district with anything like the same amount of zeal with which the philology and archaeology of Europe are studied by educated Europeans, the result would probably be that many questions which are now regarded as insoluble would speedily be solved, and that pursuits now generally regarded as barren would be found full of fruit.

Native pandits have never been surpassed in patient labour or in an accurate knowledge of details. They require in addition that zeal for historic truth and that power of discrimination, as well as of generalisation, which have hitherto been supposed to be special characteristics of the European mind. Both these classes of qualities seem to me to be combined in a remarkable degree in the articles recently contributed by learned natives to the Bombay Indian Antiquary on subjects connected with the languages and literature of Northern India; and those articles appear to me to be valuable not only in themselves, but also as giving the world a specimen of the kind of results that might be expected if learned natives of Southern India entered, in the same critical, careful spirit, on the cultivation of the similar, though hitherto much-neglected, field of literary labour, which may be regarded as specially their own."

[a.a.O., S. ix ff.]

"CONTENTS.

INTRODUCTION,

Object in view, investigation and illustration of grammatical structure of Dravidian languages. Those languages the vernaculars of Southern India, 1. Position of Sanskrit and Hindûstânî, 2. Position of English. Note.—Sir Erskine Perry ; English included in General Test.

Use of the Common Term ‘ Dravidian,’ .

Dravidian Languages at one time styled ‘ Tamulian.' Kumârilabhatta’s term, Ândhra-Drâvida bhâshâ, 3. Note.—Dr Burnell’s remarks, 4. Reasons for choosing the term Dravidian : Manu’s use of ‘Dravida,’ 5. Use of ‘Drâvidî’ by philological writers, 6. Division of Indian vernaculars by Northern Pandits into two classes—Gauras and Drâviras, 7. No common term used by native Dravidian scholars ; Varâha-mihira’s local knowledge.

Enumeration of Dravidian Languages,

Six Cultivated Dialects.
Six Uncultivated Dialects.

I. Tamil,

Where spoken, 9. Name of Madras ; spelling of ‘Tamil,’ 10. Tamil erroneously called ‘Malabar;’ origin of the error; Professor Max Müller ; Dr Hunter, 11. Colebooke ; first book printed in Tamil, 12. ‘Dravida’ corresponds to ‘Tamil’ in Sanskrit; proof of this; Varahâ-mihira, Târanâtha, Mahâwanso, 13. Asôka’s inscription ; Peutinger Tables ; Ravenna geographer, 14. Derivation of native pandits ; names of three subdivisions of Tamil people ; Pândya ; Singhalese traditions, Mahâbhârata ; Pândyas on Malabar coast ; Note—Embassy of King Pandion to Augustus, 15. Pândyas as known to the Greeks, 16. Pliny’s references to the Pândyas; Chôla.—Aśôka’s inscription, Ptolemy, Hwen Thsang; capital of the Chôlas, extent of their power, 17. Chêra.— Various shapes of this name ; original identity of the three subdivisions of the Tamil people ; native tradition, representations in Sanskrit, 18. Why is Tamil called ‘Aravam?' Various theories, 19. Why are Tamilians called Tigalar by the Canarese ?

II. Malayâlam, .       .       .       .       .       .       .

Where spoken, 20. Origin of the name ‘ Malayâlam,’ 21. Different shapes of the name Kêrala ; identity with ‘ Chêra ; ’ meaning of ‘ Kongu,’ 22. Cosmas Indicopleustes’ Malé ; period of separation of Malayâlam from Tamil, 23. Configuration of the country.

Origin of the term ' Coromandel,'          

Fra Paulino’s supposition ; use of 'Choramandala’ by the first Portuguese ; equivalent of Ma’bar, 25. Derivation from name of village of Coromandel inadmissible; Colonel Yule’s communication.

Origin of the term ‘ Malabar,'    

Use of first part of the name amongst Greeks and Arabians ; use of the affix bâr amongst Arabians and early Europeans ; origin of bâr, 27. Suggestion of Dr Gundert; Colonel Yule’s communication; Maldives ; Persian bâr; origin of wâr of Kattywar, &c.; Dr Trumpp.

III. Telugu,

Where spoken, 29. Eastern ‘Klings;’ Sanskrit Ândhra ; Andhras in the Vedas and the Greek writers, 30. Derivation of the name Telugu ; native derivation regarded by Mr C. P. Brown as inaccurate, 31. Traces of Trilingam ; traces of Trikalinga; meaning of Vadugu.

IV. Canarese,

Where spoken, 33. Derivation of the name Karnâtaka; different applications of the name.

V. Tulu,

Where spoken; Tulu a highly-developed language; to which Dravidian language most nearly allied ?

VI. Kudagu or Coorg, .

Where spoken ; which Dravidian language it resembles most; doubtful whether it should be placed amongst the cultivated class.

VII. Tuda,

Where spoken; Tudas the smallest of Dravidian tribes; books about the Tudas and their language.

VIII. Kôta,.

Where spoken; characteristics of the language.

IX. Gônd,

Gôndwana ; numbers of the Gônds; different tribes ; Kôîtôrs.

X. Khond or Ku, .

Where spoken; human sacrifices; origin of name.

XI. Mâler or Râjmahâl,

Where spoken; language different from that of the Santals.

XII. Orâon,

Relationships of this tribe and their language, 39. Amount of the Dravidian element in the Miller and Orâon not clearly ascertained, 40. Census of peoples and tribes speaking Dravidian languages, 41. Tribes not enumerated; Kolarian tribes, 42. Tribes of the North-Eastern frontier; Brahui contains a Dravidian element; Dravidians seem to have entered India from the North-West, 43.

The Dravidian idioms not merely provincial dialects of the same language,

People not mutually understood; Tamil and Telugu furthest apart.

The Dravidian Languages independent of Sanskrit, .      .      

Supposition of the northern pandits that the South-Indian vernaculars were derived from Sanskrit erroneous, 43. List of sixty words in Sanskrit and Tamil, 48. Ancient dialect of Tamil contains little Sanskrit, 49. Relation of English to Latin, and of Tamil to Sanskrit, illustrated by a comparison of Ten Commandments in English and Tamil, 49. Archbishop Trench’s expressions, 50. Tamil less studied than other dialects by Brâhmans, 51. Thirteen particulars in which the Dravidian languages differ essentially from Sanskrit, 52-54. Are there traces of Scythian influences in Sanskrit itself? Mr Edkins’s “ China’s Place in Philology," 54 ; Note.—Structure of Japanese.

Is there a Dravidian element in the Vernacular Languages of Northern India?

Hypothesis that the corruption of Sanskrit out of which the Northern vernaculars have arisen was due to the Dravidian languages considered; general conclusion that the modifying influences, though probably Scythian or non-Aryan, do not appear to have been distinctively Dravidian, 56-64.

To what group of Languages are the Dravidian idioms to be affiliated ? .

Professor Rask’s opinion, 64. Meaning of the term ‘ Scythian ; ’ Professor Max Müller, 65. Intercomparison of the Scythian languages themselves should be carried further, 66. Some of the resemblances incapable of being accounted for by accident, 67. The original unity of languages probable, 68. Confirmation of the Scythian theory by the Behistun Tablets, 68. Principal points of resemblance between the language of the Tablets and the Dravidian languages, 69, 70. The existence of any analogy between the Dravidian languages and the Finno-Ugrian tends to confirm the argument for the original oneness of the human race, 71. Note.—Professor Hunfalvy, 71. Indo-European languages not so prolific of differences as Scythian, 72. Relationship of Dravidian languages to Scythian not universally admitted; Dr Pope’s remarks, 73. Mr Cover’s “ Folk-Songs; ’’ Indo-European analogies discoverable in the Dravidian languages, 74. Dr Bleek’s remarks; possibility of developments ab intra, 75. List of primitive Indo-Europeanisms discoverable in the Dravidian languages, 76. Position between Indo-European and Scythian languages occupied by Dravidian ; existence of a few Semitic analogies, 77. Australian affinities, 78, 79. Resemblances discoverable in an African language, 80.

Which language or dialect best represents the primitive condition of the Dravidian tongues? .

No one dialect implicitly to be followed; a comparison of all existing dialects our safest guide.

1. Literary, classical dialects of the Dravidian languages: to what extent may they be regarded as representing the primitive condition of those languages?  

As soon as the Indian languages begin to be cultivated, the literary style has a tendency to become a literary language, 81. Illustrations from Northern India; the same tendency in the Dravidian languages, 82. High Tamil, 83.

2. High antiquity of the literary cultivation of Tamil,

Six reasons for inferring its relatively high antiquity, 84, 85. The Sanskrit words contained in Tamil belong to three different periods; Note—Carnatic temples, 86. Remarkable corruptions of certain Sanskrit words, 87. Tamil inscriptions, 88. Characters in which those inscriptions are written; character of Jewish and Christian tablets; Note—Historical information contained in those inscriptions; language of those inscriptions Tamil; inferences from this; Note—Meaning of the phrase opposite a year, 89.

Earliest extant Written Relics of the Dravidian Languages,

Dravidian words in the Hebrew of the Old Testament, 91, 92. Earliest Dravidian word in Greek, Ctesias’s name for cinnamon, 93. Largest stock of Dravidian words found in names of places mentioned by Ptolemy and the other Greek geographers, 94. List of these words, 94-104. Condition of the Dravidian languages scarcely at all changed since the time of the Greeks, 104. Note.—Roman coins; dates of Greek geographers, 105. Words of the Turks of the Altai preserved by the Chinese ; period when the Dravidian speech divided into dialects, 106.

Political and Social Relation of the Primitive Dravidians to the Aryan and Prae-Aryan Inhabitants of Northern India,

Were the Dravidians identical with the aborigines whom the Aryans found in India ? 107. Relations of the Dravidians to the Aryans seem to have been always peaceable, 108. Dravidians may have been preceded by another Scythian race, 109. Mr Curzon’s opinion ; immigrations from India to Ceylon and back again ; Note.—Sanskrit and Dravidian names for the points of the compass, 110.

Original Use and Progressive Extension of the term ‘Śûdra,’ .

Ethnological value of Manu’s classification, 111. Were the Śûdras of the same race as the Aryans, or of a different race? Lassen’s supposition, 112. Sanskrit authorities quoted, 113. Aryanisation of the Dravidians the result, not of conquest, but of colonisation ; Note—Śagara’s distinguishing marks ; long hair of the Dravidians, 114. Connection of the Pândyas with the Pândavas ; Note—Professor Max Müller's remarks, 115. Dravidians called Śûdras by the Brâhmans; Śûdra has a higher meaning in the South than in the North, 116.

Prae-Aryan Civilisation of the Dravidians,

Testimony of the Dravidian vocabulary, when freed from its Sanskrit, 117, 118.

Probable date of Aryan civilisation of the Dravidians,

First city and state of the Dravidians probably Kolkei on the Tâmraparni; Agastya, the traditional leader of the first Brâhman colony, 119. Agastya’s age; references to Dravidas, &c., in Manu and the Mahâbhârata ; Note—name of Agastya’s mountain, 120. References to early Dravidians in Mahâ-wanso, 121. Inference from Kumârila-bhatta’s reference to the Dravidians; names of places recorded by the Greeks Brahmanical; suppositions respecting earliest Dravidian characters, 122.

Relative Antiquity of Dravidian Literature,

Age of Telugu Literature.

A few works composed towards the end of the twelfth century, nearly all the rest in the fourteenth and subsequent centuries ; Vemana’s poems, 123.

Age of Canarese Literature.

New light thrown on age of Canarese literature by Mr Kittel’s publication of Kêśava’s Grammar of Ancient Canarese; age of Kêśava; probably he lived about the end of the twelfth century, 124.

Age of Malayâlam Literature.

Dr Gundert’s statements; earliest phase of the language exhibited in the Râma Charita, 125.

Age of Tamil Literature.

Position of Agastya in Tamil literature; works ascribed to Agastya not genuine, 126. Stanza attributed to him ; grammar of Tolkâppiyan ; Age of most Hindû writings unknown; Tamil literature may be arranged in cycles, 127.

(1.) The Jaina Cycle.

Reasons for not styling this the cycle of the Madura College, 128. Oldest Tamil works extant appear to have been written by Jainas; duration of Jaina period; Note—Dr Burnell’s remarks, 129. The Kural; reasons for assigning it to the tenth century, 130. Relation of Kural to Madura College, 131. Nâladiyâr and Chintâmani; classical dictionaries, 132.

(2.) The Tamil Râmâyana Cycle.

Differences between the Tamil version and the Sanskrit original, 133. Many poets lived at this period; date prefixed to the poem too early, 134. Relation of this poem to the reigns of Râjêndra Chôla and Kulôtunga Chôla; Rajendra’s date, 135. Date of Râmânuja, 136. Auveiyar’s date ; the turkey; Mr Scott’s rendering, 137.

(3.) The Śaiva Revival Cycle.

Two large collections of poems belong to this cycle, 138. This cycle identical with the reign of Sundara Pândya; was this prince identical with Marco Polo’s Sender-bandi ? his date beset with difficulties, 139. Reasons for placing him later than the eleventh century, 140. Statements of Muhammedan historians respecting two Sundaras, 141. Madura inscription ; Muhammedan influences, 142.

(4.) The Vaishnava Cycle.

Poetical compositions of the disciples of Râmânuja; their date uncertain, 143. No reference in Śaiva poems to the Vaishnava ones, and vice versâ, 143.

(5.) The Cycle of the Literary Revival, .       .       .       .       .

The head of this new period one of the Pândya princes ; characteristics of the poems of this period, 144. Ati-Vîra-Râma Pândya’s date discovered in an inscription, 145. Relation of the Pândya princes of that period to the Nâyaks of Madura, 145.

(6.) The Anti-Brahmanical Cycle,      .       .      .      

Compositions of the so-called Sittar school; characteristics of these compositions, 146. The writers of this school acquainted with Christianity, 147. Quotations from Śiva-vâkyar, 148.

(7.) The Modern Writers,

Their works numerous, but not generally valuable; Beschi’s great poem, 149. Introduction of good colloquial prose, 150. Comparison between the number of books printed in Bengali and in Tamil; characteristics of Dravidian poetry ; alliteration and rhyme, 151. Mental physiology of Indo-Europeans and Dravidians illustrated by their language; reason why literature could not flourish, 152. New stimulus now given to the native mind, 153.

[Es folgt eine umfangreiche COMPARATIVE GRAMMAR.]

APPENDIX, ........510

I. Minor Dravidian Dialects and Brahuî,

1. Tuda. Information derived from Dr Pope, Mr Metz, and Colonel Marshall, 510. Dr Pope’s conclusions respecting Tuda; 2. Kôta ; who are the Kôtas ? paradigm of pronoun and verb; resemblance to Ancient Canarese, 512. 3. Gônd; publications by Mr Driberg and Mr Dawson ; particulars in which Gônd agrees with Telugu and Canarese; more numerous particulars in which it agrees with Tamil, 513. Particulars in which it takes a course of its own, 514, 515. 4. Ku; Mr Latchmaji’s Grammar; Note.—agreements and disagreements with other idioms, 516. 5. Râjmahâl; list of words defective; contains Dravidian element, 517. 6. Orâon ; Mr Batsch’s “ Grammar and Vocabulary ; ” Orâon more distinctively Dravidian, 518. Dravidian words in Orâon; 7. Dravidian element in Brahuî. Dr Bellew’s book, 518. Brahuî contains many Scythian elements, some distinctively Dravidian, 519. Illustrations of the Dravidian element, 520. Difference between Brahuî and languages of the North-Eastern frontier, 521.

II. Remarks on the Philological Portion of Mr Cover's “Folk-Songs of Southern India,”

Real nature of the theory respecting the relationship of the Dravidian languages to the languages of the Scythian group advocated in the first edition of this work. Reprint of an article in Madras Mail, 1872.

Literary merits of Mr Cover’s book, 522. Advance in philological science since issue of first edition of this work, 523. Little advance outside the Aryan family, 524. Dr Caldwell’s theory explained, 525. Illustrative quotations, 526. That theory wide enough to include Mr Cover’s theory, 527. Criticism in Journal of American Oriental Society; any attempt to prove Dravidian languages distinctively Aryan will be open to keen scrutiny, 528. Origin of Dravidian word for ‘devil,’ 529-31. Dravidian words for ‘light,’ 532-33. Consequences of Scythic theory not so serious as Mr Gover supposed ; Dr Farrar, 534. Earliest Aryans and earliest Turanians not widely different, 535.

III. Sundara Pândya,

Extracts from Muhammedan historians referred to in Introduction; passages from Rashiduddin, 535. Passages from Wassaf, 536. Who was Kales Dewar ? 537. Mr Rhys Davids’s extract from Singhalese records respecting king Kulsekhara, 538. Occurrence in two different connections of the same three names, 539. Invasion of Malik Kafûr, 540.

IV. Are the Pariars (Pareiyas) of Southern India Dravidians?

Supposition that the lower classes of Southern India are not Hindûs, 540. ‘ Hindu’ has become a term of religion, 541. Discrepancies in use of this term ; University use ; Mr Beames, 542. Are Shanars not Hindûs ? Supposition of Europeans respecting origin of Pareiyas, 543. Origin of ‘mixed castes’ fictitious ; children of dancing-girls, 514. Pareiyas have a caste of their own; numbers, 545. Are Pareiyas Dravidians ? Theory that they are pre-Dravidians, 546. Arguments in support of this theory, 547. Special privileges enjoyed by lower castes; Mr Walhouse, 548. Meaning of name Pareiya, 549. Meaning of corresponding Telugu, Mala, and Malayâlam Puleiya, 550. Still stronger arguments adducible against this theory, 551, 552. Effect of caste differences, 553. Essential unity of all Dravidian dialects argues unity of race, 554.

V. Are the Neilgherry (Nilagiri) Tudas Dravidians?

Much more known now about the Tudas ; Mr Metz; Dr Pope ; Colonel Marshall, 555. Reasons for supposing the Tudas a different race from their neighbours, 556. Those reasons inadequate, 557. Tudas probably Dravidians, 558.

VI. Dravidian Physical Type, .      .      .      .      .      .55

Conclusion derived from lingual comparison; Gônds belong to the same race ; have the Gônds degenerated, or the South-Indian Dravidians risen? 558. Mr Hodgson’s comparison of Aryan and Tamilian types; Professor Max Muller’s statement, 559. Puranic statements ; Dravidians of the South not Nishâdas, 560. Quatrefage’s theory ; differences in feature accounted for, 561. Type of higher classes ; Tuda type, 562. Colour of skin not necessarily unaccountable, 563. Blackening influence of heat; local illustration, 564. Shanars ; Portuguese ; Brahmans, 565. Strabo and Herodotus ; peculiar blackness of Puleiyas on Malabar coast not easily accounted for, 566. Gônd type, Negrito or Mongolian ? Mr Hislop, 567. Central Provinces Gazetteer; mental development of Gônds, 568. Ascent from Mongolian type to Caucasian not unknown ; Indian Mohammedans, 569. Dr Carpenter’s remarks on European examples of this ascent, 570. Magyar type, 571. Mongolian-looking Indian tribes entered by north-east; statement of Periplus, 572. Colonel Dalton’s photographs; Sir George Campbell’s “ Ethnology of India,’’ 573. Supposes the majority of South Indians of good caste to be Aryans; little or no ethnological objection to this theory, 574. Historical and linguistic difficulties numerous, 575. Statement of those difficulties, 576-78.

VII. Ancient Religion of the Dravidians,

Religious usages of ancient Aryans, 579. Demonolatry of primitive Dravidians; Shamanism ; Note.—origin of word ‘Shaman,’ 580. Peculiarities of Shamanite worship ; Note.—Demonolatry of Ceylon; demoniacal element even in the Veda; explanation of sacrifice of Daksha, 581. Quotations illustrative of Shamanism from Marco Polo, Mr Hodgson and others, 582-84. Shanar demonolatrous rites, 585. Similar system in Mysore; also in Chûtiâ Nâgpûr, 586. Substantial identity of the two demonolatries, 587. Religion of the Khonds; religion of the Tudas, 588. Colonel Marshall’s researches and explanations, 589-90. Certain so-called Druidical remains erroneously attributed to the Tudas; Note.—Glazed pottery; Dr Hunter, 591. Antiquity of the cairns, 592. Discovery of similar cairns in many other places, 593. Different kinds of cairns ; information supplied by Mr Metz, 593. Hindûs of the plains know nothing of the people who disposed of their dead in this manner ; meaning of Tamil names for cairns, 594. Malayalam name, 595. Theories respecting origin of people referred to, 596. General conclusion respecting religion of ancient Dravidians, 597."

[a.a.O., S. xvii - xxii ; xli - xlii]

188x

Madras Presidency: Ausbreitung des "Neo-Shaivism" durch

"(Re)assertions of Tamil’s divinity (teyvattanmai [தெய்வத்தன்மை]) accompanied a wave of religious revivalism which surfaced in the Madras Presidency in the closing decades of the nineteenth century, primarily centered around a reworking of Shaivism, declared the most ancient and authentic religion of those Tamilians who were not Aryan Brahmans. Neo-Shaivism, as I shall refer to this reformulated religion, began to make its presence felt from around the 1880s through the publishing and organizational activities of some its principal exponents, such as P. Sundaram Pillai, J. M. Nallaswami Pillai (1864-1920), P. V. Manikkam Nayakar (1871-1931), K. Subramania Pillai (1888-1945), Nilambikai Ammai (1903-45), and, most prolific of all, Maraimalai Adigal (1876-1950). These reformers typically hailed from the ranks of the new elites spawned by colonialism everywhere in India: they were educated, urban, middleclass, upper-caste “non-Brahman” professionals and government employees. They may have disagreed with each other on finer points of terminology or doctrine, but they were unanimous in their demand for the removal of “polytheistic” religious practices, claimed to have been introduced into a pristine Shaivism by Aryan Brahmans from the North through their linguistic vehicle, Sanskrit. Their program was puritanical and elitist as well in its advocacy of vegetarianism and teetotalism, and in its call for the excision of “irrational” customs and rituals (animal sacrifices, the worship of godlings, and the like) which were the very stuff of village and popular religion. For the true “Tamil religion” (tamilar matam [தமிழர் மதம்]), they insisted, was the monotheistic, “rational” worship of Shiva using pure Tamil rituals based on Tamil scriptures performed by Tamil (“non-Brahman”) priests through the liturgical medium of divine Tamil (Alarmelmankai 1914; Maraimalai Adigal 1930a, 1974b; K. Subramania Pillai 1940; Swaminatha Upatiyayan 1921)."

[Quelle: Sumathi Ramaswamy [சுமதி ராமஸ்வாமி]: Passions of tongue : Language devotion in Tamil India 1891 - 1970. -- Berkeley : Univ. of California Pr., 1997. -- S. 25. -- Fair use]

1880-10-21

Kumbakonam (Tamil கும்பகோணம்):

"Clearly, only didactic and religious works were counted for in the pre-modern canon. This point is made rather dramatically by U. V. Swaminatha Iyer [Tamil உ. வே. சாமிநாதையர்] (1855-1942), the legendary editor of Tamil classics. On Thursday, 21 October 1880, U.V. Swaminatha Iyer, then a 25-year-old teacher at the Kumbakonam Government College, went to meet Salem Ramaswami Mudalia [Tamil சேலம் இராமசாமி முதலியார், 1853 - 1892], a civil munsif who had recently been transferred to the small town of Kumbakonam. Swaminatha Iyer had been a pupil of Mahavidwan Meenakshisundaram Pillai [Tamil மீனாட்சிசுந்தரம் பிள்ளை, 1815 - 1876], acknowledged as the finest Tamil teacher of the nineteenth century. Salem Ramaswamy Mudaliar had arrived with the reputation of being a liberal man with a broad outlook who patronised scholarship. In an obvious attempt to win his friendship and ingratiate himself, Swaminatha Iyer had ventured to meet him, at the instance of the pontiff of  Thiruvadudurai Adheenam, at his home. What transpired at this meeting is dramatically narrated by Swaminatha Iyer, in his famed autobiography.

'With whom did you study,’ Salem Ramaswamy Mudaliar queried. 'Mahavidwan Meenakshisundaram Pillai,’ I replied.

I expected the uttering of Pillai’s name to create a ripple. Even if he did not respect my official position, perhaps he could at least open out to me as a student of Pillai? He did not and spoke in a measured manner. . . . He continued with his questions ‘What did you study?’ came the next question. Certain that I could dazzle him with a reply to this question, I listed the texts that I had studied:

  • Kudandai Andadhi,

  • Marasai Andadhi,

  • Pugalur Andadhi,

  • Thiruvarangathandadhi,

  • Alagarandadhi,

  • Kambarandadhi,

  • Mullai Andadhi,

  • Meenatchiyammai Pillai Tamil,

  • Muthukumaraswamy Pillai Tamil,

  • Akilandanayaki Pillai Tamil, S

  • ekkilar Pillai Tamil,

  • Thirukkovaiyar,

  • Tanjaivanan Kovai. . . .

Twenty andadhis [அந்தாதி], twenty kalambakams [கலம்பக], fifteen kovais, thirty Pillai Tamils, twenty ulas—thus I listed a number of prabandams [பிரபந்தம்]. There was not a trace of wonderment on his face.

Suddenly, he interjected, ‘What is it worth?’ I was not a little disappointed. ... I did not give up and began a list of Puranams [புராணம்]: ‘Thiruvilaiyadal Puranam, Thirunagaikkarona Puranam, Mayura Puranam, Kanda Puranam, Periya Puranam, Kuttrala Puranam... He continued to look still like a graven image.

‘Naidadam, Prabulinga Leelai, Sivagnana Bodham, Sivagnana Sithiyar,' I continued. Gave the names of some grammars. He continued to remain unmoved. With the thought that I had forgotten the most important of them all, I said, ‘I have read Kambaramayanam in full two to three times over....’

‘It is good that you have read all these later day works. Have you read any of the ancient texts?’ he asked....

‘There are so many old works among those I have listed!’ I replied. Only when he countered me with the question ‘Have you read the texts which are the wellsprings of these texts?’, did I realise that he was up to something.

‘I don’t know the texts you are talking about?’

‘Have you read Seevaka Chinthamani? Manimekalai?’

I had not read the books he mentioned. Nor had my teacher. I had never even set my eyes on these texts. I thought to myself, ‘Without considering the many books I had studied, why should this man make a big issue of my not having read these couple of books’ and prided myself on this. ‘I had no access to these books. If I did I am confident of reading them’ I replied emphatically.

No doubt, U.V. Swaminatha Iyer’s account of this meeting with Salem Ramaswamy Mudaliar is highly dramatised and some matters of fact are suspect. (Contrary to what U.V. Swaminatha Iyer would have us believe, one canto of Seevaka Chinthamani was already a prescribed text and Henry Bower had published it way back in 1868. Mahavidwan Meenakshisundaram Pillai had actually copied the text with Nachinarkkiniyar’s commentary and deposited it in the Thiruvadudurai Mutt’s library.) But it highlights rather emphatically the conflict that was emerging in the later part of the nineteenth century, over what was the real canon, the great tradition. U.V. Swaminatha Iyer’s long list in a sense provides an inventory of works constituting the pre-modern canon. It makes no mention of the entire body of Sangam literature and the epics, and is dominated by texts that are now designated as chittrilakkiyam [Minor Literature]. His list may be compared to the canonical works mentioned and discussed in two important pre-colonial Tamil texts useful for understanding Tamil literary history."

[Quelle: A. R. Venkatachalapathy [Tamil ஆ. இரா. வேங்கடாசலபதி): In Those Days There Was No Coffee: Writings in Cultural History,  -- New Delhi : Yoda, 2006. -- Kindle ed. -- Fair use]

1887

Es erscheint:

 சீவக சிந்தாமணி (Cīvaka Cintāmaṇi) / hrsg. von U. V. Swaminatha Iyer (Tamil உ. வே. சாமிநாதையர் - U. Vē. Cāminātaiyar, 1855 - 1942)

"It was the year 1887 in Madras city. After more than six years of laboring over the palm-leaf manuscript of the ancient epic poem Civaka Cintamani, Swaminatha Aiyar had just handed over the final sections of the text to his printer. For the past few years, his entire life had been wrapped up in the Cintamani: he woke up thinking about it and stayed up late into the night, deciphering and transcribing archaic words. His fingers were sore from turning over the brittle leaves of the manuscript, and his eyes ached from going over proofs by the dim light of oil lamps. He had spent most of his summer and winter vacations, and all other days he could steal from his teaching responsibilities, travelling back and forth between the printer’s workshop, in Madras city, and his college and home, far south in Kumbakonam. There had been moments of great anxiety when he had been convulsed with fear he would run out of money, that the press would burn down, or that malcontents would tamper with his proofs. But all that was now in the past. He had seen the work through to its final printed form. It was only then, after all those years of laboring day and night, that he allowed himself the luxury of succumbing to his tiredness. He was still at the printer’s. He laid himself down, right there and then on the floor, and slept deeply and happily. When he woke up, he saw a man standing before him. “Here, sir, is the Pattuppattu” the man said, and handed over to Swaminathan another palm-leaf manuscript. He thought, “Tamilannai [Tamiḻttāy - தமிழ்த்தாய் = Mutter Tamil] herself has sent [this man], commanding me to go on with my service to Tamil,” and he addressed her:

“O mother! You have (re)adorned yourself with the Cintamani that I, your poor devotee, gave back to you. Continue to offer me grace, so that I, your servant, can go on with my work of recovering all your other jewels.”

So saying, he reverenced Tamilttay with all his heart, and continued, he tells us, for the rest of his life trying to fulfill her wishes (Swaminatha Aiyar 1982: 612-13)."

[Quelle: Sumathi Ramaswamy [சுமதி ராமஸ்வாமி]: Passions of tongue : Language devotion in Tamil India 1891 - 1970. -- Berkeley : Univ. of California Pr., 1997. -- S. 179f. -- Fair use]

1889

Es erscheint der Malayalam Roman

ഒ. ചന്തുമേനോൻ [O. Chandu Menon] < 1847 – 1899>: ഇന്ദുലേഖ [Indulekha]


Abb.: Einbandtitel

"Parenthetically and briefly, Indulekha discussed whether the newly formed Congress was anti-British: being anti-British was seen as a risk or a flaw. For men like Bonnerjee and Naoroji, it was a charge to be refuted.

Yet Indulekha is not a text in colonialism’s defence. As the scholar G. Arunima puts it, the novel provides ‘a complex engagement with nationalism and colonialism’. Among the questions it touches upon is the equation between one of the Malayali world’s most energetic castes, the Nairs [Malayalam നായർ] (still called Sudras at the time, including by some Nairs), and that world’s ‘highest’ caste, the Nambudiri Brahmins [Malayalam നമ്പൂതിരി].

The novel’s story revolves around a love affair between two Nairs: Indulekha and Madhavan, an English-educated student waiting to graduate from Madras University before starting a legal career. Though not receiving any formal school education, Indulekha is fluent in both English and Sanskrit, having been trained at home by the best teachers.

In Arunima’s words,

 ‘By making Indulekha, a Sudra (Nayar) woman, a Sanskrit scholar, Chandu Menon made a serious critique of the caste pretensions of the Brahmins.’

Menon also makes Indulekha the winner in an argument she has with a pretentious Nambudiri.

Son of a prosperous Nair tahsildar in Madras Presidency’s Malabar district, Chandu Menon went to a school started by the Basel Mission in the coastal town of Talasseri, but he was also taught Malayalam, Sanskrit and Hindustani at home. Learning the law without going to a law college and gaining admiration for acuteness and impartiality, he became, unusually for an Indian in his time, a sub-judge.

Work took Menon to the spaces of British officials, who were appreciative of his abilities, but one of them, G. R. Sharp, went too far when, on one occasion, he caught hold of Menon’s kuduma (hairknot) and suggested its removal. Indulekha contains a hint of the offending incident.

Along with colonial rule, shoes and slippers were introduced to the Malabar countryside, but custom forbade footwear before superiors or elders. When Menon saw one day, in front of his house, a subordinate of his, a Tamil Brahmin, carrying something wrapped in paper, he asked, ‘Sweets?’ ‘No, sir,’ the man replied, ‘these are my new slippers.’ This incident too found a place in Indulekha.

Recognizing that new customs threatened long-nursed pictures of an Indian self, and of the standing in society of an Indian’s caste, Indulekha seemed to point out that a native could accept, reject or modify the colonizing world’s offerings.

A mixed response was the ground reality. While Western impact caused a few Nairs like Chandu Menon’s father to give his son a paternal prefix (Oyyarathu in this case), the great majority chose to remain linked in their names to their mother’s taravad [തറവാട്], her house and lineage.

Allowing Malayalis to smile at changes in their society and also at the odd ways of their new masters, Indulekha captivated Nair households because its Malayalam was closer to the spoken idiom, and because it told a story near to their lives or hopes, not a tale of ages gone by, or of ‘the marvels of gods and goddesses, recoverable only through the medium of a pristine, Sanskritized language’.

Even if, as Chandu Menon conceded, there were very few actual Indulekhas in 1889, a great many Malayali young women were willing to imagine themselves as future Indulekhas."

[Quelle: Rajmohan Gandhi (Hindi राजमोहन गांधी, 1935 - ): Modern South India : A history from the 17th century to our times. -- New Delhi : Aleph, 2018. -- S. 221ff. -- Fair use]

1891

Es erscheint das Tamil Drama:

P. Sundaram Pillai (Tamil பெ. சுந்தரம் பிள்ளை - Pe. Cuntaram Piḷḷai, 1855 - 1897): மனோன்மணீயம் - Maṉōṉmaṇīyam [Manonmaniam]

"My first introduction to Tamilttai [Tamil தமிழ்த்தாய் = Mutter Tamil] came in 1988 when I chanced upon an anthology of poems called Moliyaraci, “Queen language.” Its very first selection, drawn from an 1891 play, Manonmaniyam, by P. Sundaram Pillai (1855-97), represented the earth as a woman whose beautiful face is paratak kantam [பாராட்டாக கண்டம் = Kontinent des Lobes] (India) and whose radiant brow is the southern peninsula. The tiravita natu [திராவிட நாடு] (Dravidian land) adorns that brow as an auspicious tilakam (sacred mark). The poem then declared:

O great goddess Tamil (tamil ananku)!
Like the fragrance of that
tilakam [திலகம்], your fame spreads in all directions, and delights the whole world.
Spellbound in admiration of your splendid youth and power, we offer you our homage.

The poem went on in this vein for several more verses (Velayutam Pillai 1971: 1-3). My interest in it was further piqued when I discovered that its first verse was institutionalized in June 1970 as the Tamilnadu state’s “prayer song.” The government’s reasons for doing this are telling:

It is observed by Government that many prayer songs are being sung at the commencement of functions organized by Government or attended by Ministers. In order to ensure uniformity in the singing of prayer songs, the Government have been for some time considering whether a theme might be chosen for being rendered as a prayer song, which will have no religious or sectarian association. After very careful consideration, the Government have decided that the piece containing six lines from Thiru. [Mr.] Sundaram Pillai’s “Manonmaneeyam” which is an invocation to the Goddess of Tamil, would be an appropriate theme for being rendered as a prayer song."

[Quelle: Sumathi Ramaswamy [சுமதி ராமஸ்வாமி]: Passions of tongue : Language devotion in Tamil India 1891 - 1970. -- Berkeley : Univ. of California Pr., 1997. -- S. 17f. -- Fair use]

1891-01-01

Travancore (Malayalam തിരുവിതാംകൂർ): Malayali Memorial

"Thus, the main agitation in these three states [Travancore, Mysore, Cochin] concentrated mainly on charges of non-appointment of natives in government services. While in Mysore the grievance against ‘foreign Dewans’ was projected in the press and in the Legislature, in Travancore the grievance was projected in a more dramatic way in the presentation of the Malayali Memorial in 1891.

This Memorial had been preceded by a one-man agitation put up by G. Parameswara Pillai, who under the pseudonym ‘Pro-Patra’, in an open letter to Lord Connemara, the Governor of Madras in 1887, complained that from 1817 to 1872, the country in the hands of eight Rao Dewans had seen the introduction of relations and friends, and relations' friends, and friends’ friends of the Dewans into the high offices of the state.

The mammoth Malayali Memorial signed by 19,038 was an exercise in statistical study which drove home the same point with a greater poignancy and brutality—as all statistically arraigned data do—the iniquity suffered by the natives of the states at the hands of the foreign Dewans.

The ammunition for the charge was inadvertently provided by the then Dewan of Travancore, Mr. Rama Rao himself, in publishing A Summary of the "Returns of the Public Servants in the State", which for the first time disclosed to the public view the unjust distribution of government appointments among the different castes. The Memorial pointed out that of the 16,167 posts in government service, 3,407 posts with salaries above Rs. 10, 1,444 posts were held by foreign Hindus. If one were to take the higher salaries into consideration, the divergence became more marked, in that the average daily salary earning of the foreign Brahmin was equivalent of Rs. 6.77 ps. as against an earning of 12 ps. for Malayali Sudras and 13 ps. for a Christian.

What emphasised the point even more clearly was the comparative analysis made in the Memorial between the position of the Malayali in British Malabar with that of Travancore State. With a comparable area, population and number of graduates, Travancore had a lower precentage of positions held by Malayalis than in Malabar.

As could be expected, the publication of this Memorial was received with great sympathy in the other two states. The Karnataka Prakasika of Mysore ran a four parts serial on this, concluding with the warning that the Memorial ought to teach a lesson to people nearer home."

[Quelle: Vanaja Rangaswami: The story of integration : A new interpretation in the context of the democratic movements in the princely states of Mysore, Travancore and Cochin 1900 - 1947. -- New Delhi : Manohar, 1981. -- S. 31f. -- Online: The story of integration : a new interpretation in the context of the democratic movements in the princely states of Mysore, Travancore, and Cochin, 1900-1947 : Rangaswami, Vanaja : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive. -- Fair use]

1891-08-28

Kodaikanal (Tamil கொடைக்கானல்): Tod von Robert_Caldwell (1814 - 1891)

"Robert Caldwell, born in Ireland in 1814, arrived in Madras in 1838 as a missionary for the London Missionary Society. He spent most of his life in the small town of Idayankudi near Tirunelveli with the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, and in 1877 he became bishop of Tinnevelli. A fellow devotee, R. P. Sethu Pillai, writes with affection that in the fifty-odd years he worked in Tamilnadu, Caldwell went home on furlough only three times. When he went back to England the third time, his friends there begged him to stay. But he refused.

“I have lived all these years for Indians. As long I am alive, I will toil for them. I will give up my life in their land.”

And so he did, and when he died in 1891, he was buried in Idayankudi on the grounds of the church that he had himself built.

“Caldwell Aiyar worked selflessly for fifty-three years for Tamilnadu. Is he not one of Tamiḻttāy's [Tamil தமிழ்த்தாய் = Mutter Tamil] true sons?”

concludes Sethu Pillai (1964: 32)."

[Quelle: Sumathi Ramaswamy [சுமதி ராமஸ்வாமி]: Passions of tongue : Language devotion in Tamil India 1891 - 1970. -- Berkeley : Univ. of California Pr., 1997. -- S. 192f. -- Fair use]

1892

Madras (Tamil மதராஸ்): Vorlesung von T. T. Saravanmuttu Pillai, Bibliothekar am Presidency College über "The study of Tamil literature:

"What is the glory of the Tamil language?. . . . Was not the Tamil language created by Agathiyar who could reduce the seven seas to a drop in his palm, as some claim. Others claim, was Tamil not created by Subrahmanya who defeated Soorapadman and saved the devas? Many others claim that it was Siva who burned Thirupuram who created Tamil. Thus our Tamil pandits are happy that Tamil’s glory is selfevident. . . . Whatever be the language, howsoever lowly it is, nobody today will accept that a language is made by one person. Further, let us concede that Sivan indeed made Tamil. What has Tamil gained from that? Was Tamil alone made by god? Then who created the other languages? If all languages are made by god, what does Tamil gain by shouting that Tamil was made by god? If you say that god speaks Tamil does it mean that god does not know other languages? If god wants to speak to others will he still use Tamil? If he speaks to each in his own language what use is it to Tamil that it is god’s language? And if Christians claim that god spoke Hebrew and Muslims that he spoke Arabic how is one to respond?"

[Quelle: A. R. Venkatachalapathy [Tamil ஆ. இரா. வேங்கடாசலபதி): In Those Days There Was No Coffee: Writings in Cultural History,  -- New Delhi : Yoda, 2006. -- Kindle ed. -- Fair use]

1897

Madras (Tamil மதராஸ் ; Telugu మద్రాస్): Es erscheint:

M. Seshagiri Sastri (சேஷகிரி சாஸ்திரி - Cēṣakiri cāstiri): Essay on Tamil literature. -- Madras : S.P.C.K., 1897. -- 60 S.

"among the majority of the Tamil pandits and others studying Tamil literature there is not much difference between a real history on the one hand and traditions, myths and legends on the other, and Tamil poems are studied and taught with a ready credulousness which has been handed down from generation to generation; and the conservatism imbibed at the feet of the Tamil teachers forms a stronghold too impregnable to all the cannons [sic] of critical and comparative study. Any person who breaks through these ancient barriers of real knowledge has to meet with much opposition, and the war against untruths, falsehoods, absurdities and inconsistencies terminates with little or no success. But when the Western education spreads more and more and turns out scholars who make original researches, and the combined results of the literary researches of these scholars are made accessible to the reading public, we shall hope that false knowledge will disappear before real knowledge."

[Quelle: Sumathi Ramaswamy [சுமதி ராமஸ்வாமி]: The lost land of Lemuria : Fabulous geographies, catastrophic histories. -- Berkeley : Univ. of California Pr., 2004. -- 334 S. : Ill. -- S. 152. -- Fair use]

1897-06 - 1914-05

Es erscheint:

The Siddhanta Deepika or The light of truth : a monthly journal devoted to religion, philosophy, literature and science / ed. J. M. Nallaswami Pillai (Tamil நல்லசுவாமி பிள்ளை, 1864 - 1920): -- Online: Internet Archive Search: The Siddhanta Deepika or The light of truth

1898-10

Madras (Tamil மதராஸ் ; Telugu మద్రాస్): Es erscheint:

[J. Nallasami Pillai (1864 - 1920]: Ancient Tamilian civilization. -- In: The light of truth or Siddhanta Deepika. -- 1894-10. -- S. 109 - 113. -- Online: Siddhanta Deepika Volume 2 : Editors: J.M.Nallasami Pillai; V.V. Raman : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

"If therefore they  [Tamilians] did not come from the north, they  must have formed the aborigines or if they came from outside, where did they come from? If we can forget for a while our prejudice against the word aborigines, and if we can believe in the tradition of there having been a vast continent south of Cape Comorin, whence all humanity and civilization flowed east and west and north, then there can be nothing strange in our regarding the Tamilians as the remnants of a pre-deluvian  race. Even the exiting works in Tamil faintly speak of 3 separate deluges which completely swamped the extreme southern shores and carried off with it all its literary treasures of ages. And it stands to reason why, in South India, unlike in ancient Chaldea and Babylon, none of the old records of the pre-historic civilisation are absolutely not forthcoming. The Palmleaf, the readiest material and the most fragile one which the Tamilians had, must also account for it. However, this theory stands on no historical or scientific footing. And when we remembered that the earliest route known to the Europeans was by the sea and that even in days of King Solomon, there was a brisk trade between his country and Western India, and from what Dr. Caldwell had pointed out there were a number of Tamil words in the Hebrew and when it was known that there were a large number of words common to the Tamil and Assyrian or Sumerian, and what important part the monsoon winds play in the Arabian Gulf, it does not seem improbable to conclude that the first settlers in Western India must have been sailors or merchants coasting along the Arabian Sea who were driven thitherward by adverse-winds and stranded. In this connection, we publish below extracts from the correspondence we bad with the late lamented Professor P. Sundaram Pillai. The argument turned on the fact whether the original of a certain work was Sanscrit or Tamil, and he held that it was the latter against the received tradition and be wrote to say (letter dated 31 st March 1896). [...]"

[a.a.O., S. 11f.]

1899

Es erscheint:

Sabapathy Navalar (1844 - 903): திராவிட பிரகாசிகை : என்னும் தமிழ் வரலாறு - Tirāviṭa pirakācikai: Eṉṉum tamiḻ varalāṟu (The Dravidian light : History of Tamil)

"The very idea of such a work spells originality.   A work of this kind had not existed in Tamil.  At first sight, this would appear to be an encyclopaedia of the standard works of the Tamil language classified into Grammar, Literature and Philosophy, of which Literature is subdivided into Saint's works.  Sangam literature, the kavyas, the puranas, the itihasas and miscellaneous literature.  Each work is given either an introduction or a summary and a critical review.  Looking more closely, one finds the work to be an indispensable guide to the study of Tamil.  It discusses and illumines various conflicting theories, setting its seal of approval on those that stood the test.  Extensive original commentaries also are given for some passages, of which that on the first stanza of Tirukural fills over fifty pages.

In the chapter on the Tamil Language, the author distinguishes letters from sounds, the former as a product of Suddha Maya and the latter as being caused in space. The difference corresponds to that between the form of a body and the light that helps the sensing of the form.  It is also held that letters can be produced only by rational beings, and that other animals converse either by sounds or by signs.  Tamil is said to be divine as it contains divine and inspired writings and as the first Grammarian Agastyar got his knowledge of Grammar by the Grace of God.  There is divinity even in the written form of the letters, the first letter A, having in it the symbol of the Ambika Shakti, which may be differentiated into Vamai, Jyeshtai & Raudri.  Coming to the various interpretations given to the words, Tamil and Thenmozhi [தேன்மொழி], all are rejected except the meaning "sweetness" for the former and "beautiful language" for the letter.

The first work on grammar known to us is that of Sage Agastyar, who was a teacher of Tamil and world-Guru of the Saiva religion.  His grammar spoke of Iyal Tamil, which was literature, of Isai-Tamil [இசை தமிழ்] or Tamil music, and of Natakam [நாடகம்] or the science and art of acting and dancing.  As the Tamil Language is radically different from Samaskritam [சமஸ்க்ரிதம் - Sanskrit], the idea that Agastyar was indebted to some Samaskrita Grammarian is easily exploded.  But his work is practically lost.

His disciple, Tolkappiyer, wrote a grammar which has lived these thousands of years, and bids fair to remain for ever.  He seems to have written only on Iyal Tamil.  But his chapter on Porul [பொருள்] is a rich mine of very valuable information  It treats of the purushartas [Ziele des Menschen], duty, wealth, pleasure and bliss, which one has to attain in one's life.  As the same kind of life cannot suit different types of people, this part of Tholkappiam is based on Geography.

This Geography does not speak of bays and capes, or areas and boundaries, but is real scientific Geography.  It classifies lands into table, lands, forests, grasslands, deserts(Deserts are dry tablelands and sparsely populated regions) and maritime regions.  It gives the fauna and flora of each kind of land, the diet, occupation, worship, amusements, music, and the degree of advancement of the people of the land.  In other words, it had reached the latest advancement in the idea of Geography in the west and Tholkappiar anticipated several thousands of years ago what the western scientist has just attained.  The Ego, the Me and the I, is treated in one part of porul grammar called Ahapporul [அகப்பொருள்] which also portrays religious life, and the Non-Ego including the various branches of political and military sciences is treated in Puraporul.  The author of the Prakasikai devotes nearly fifty pages to this immortal book giving a succinct but clear and thought-provoking account of it.  He also refers to Sivagnana Munivar's wide commentary on the preface and the first sutram of the book.

Coming to Ilakkyam [இலக்கியம்], the author places the twelve groups of religious literature before sangam literature, as some of these were composed earlier and they were sung by sanctified sages.

The author next proves that the works of the saints are equivalent to the Vedas, in as much as saints were illumined by the Arulshakthi [அருள்சக்தி] of God, and their words were therefore as much the embodiment of Arul [அருள்] as the Vedas themselves.  But he objects to the appellation of Arulpa being given to the songs of imperfect seers, and rightly holds it a blasphemy to do so.  While quoting Avvayar's famous Venpa which identifies the substance of Arulpa [அருள்ப] with the Vedas, the interpretation he gives to the term "Munimozhiyum" as "sung my Manikkavachakar" is different from the traditional view.  His chief reason for rejecting the meaning 'Vedanta Sutra" is that the work is not so well-known as a Saiva Shastra to be denoted by a name compounded of two words, each of which is a general name.  The ground of the supporters of the view is that Kovai and Tiruvachakam Tiruvachakam are easily identified without the author's name.

The term Tiruchittambalam uttered at the beginning and close of the Tamil Vedas is identified with the Pranava and is shown to be very comprehensive.  Chit is Gnana and Ambalam means Akasa.  So the term means the space of Gnana, which is the Lotus of the Heart and which includes the thirty-six tatvas and other products of Pranava.  The soul identifying itself in its contemplation with Siva, who resides in the Lotus, finally becomes Advaita with Him, or, in other words, attains Mukti.  The term Tiruchittambalam is thus identical with Pranava but is more sthula and tangible in its form.

The author devotes considerable space to Peria Puranam which he interprets as the Puranam of greatness (of saints).  This work was intended to replace Jivaka-Chintamani Jivaka-Chintamani, the study of which would be waste of time, according to the sacred dictum of Appar [...] But the Puranam is far more than a literary work, embodying the philosophy and practice of religion, devotional songs, varnashrama dharma,  and creeds of other religions.  Chintamani thus pales to insignificance before Periapuranam as a glow-worm before the rays of the midday sun.  The author's commentary on the first stanza of the Puranam is a model exposition showing the need for scientific-thinking and extensive knowledge of religious philosophy in tackling sacred songs of this kind.  Many commentators come in for severe adverse criticism, the merit of which cannot be considered here.

The next important work reviewed by the author is Thirukural, which forms a connecting link between religious literature and sangam literature.  As this work is more ethical than philosophical, it is readily accepted by all religionists, and happens to be the most popular Tamil work in the west, having been translated into many European languages.  The Jains and even Christians claim Thiruvalluvar as their co-religionist.  The Navalar's commentary on the first Kural, which covers fifty-five pages, is a wonderful performance, containing extensive quotations from the Vedas, the Agamas, and the Shastras.  It is the whole Saiva religion in a nutshell, educed from the tiny couplet by the author's massive genius, which has left a true impression on it.

In the Sangam Literature are included Pathu-Pattu Pathu-Pattu, Ettuthokai , and Pathinenkeel-Kanakku.  The so-called five Sanga Kavyas are rightly placed by the author as post-sangam works.  Chintamani was written probably four or five centuries after the dissolution of the Last Sangam.  Kandapuranam [கந்த புராணம்] is placed at the top of Puranic Literature, and here too the author strikes an original note regarding the agglutination of the first pair of words in the Kappu. Whereas the traditional view is that Veerasohium is an authority for it [...], it is contended that the change is authorised by Tholkappier in his Sutram of exceptions and that Buddha Mitranar, whose claim for infallibility cannot be upheld, had no right to make a rule against Tholkappier and against the usage of the Sangam Literature and the works of other great authors.  The only possible justification for him could be the use by Kachiyappar, who then must have preceded the author of Veerasozhium.

In Shastraic Literature are included eighteen kinds of philosophy and science - the Vedas, Vedic-music, Vedic-rituals, Vedic-grammar, Vedic-philosophy, Vedic-prosody, Astronomy, the eighteen Puranas, Logic, Natural and Religious philosophy, Law, Medicine, Military Science, Music and Political Economy. 

Of the six Vedic Shastras which are misnamed "the six systems of philosophy" (They are supplementary and form a single system.  The apparent differences in them are due to narrow views of them) Vaiseshika is treated in Tarka Paripadai of Sivaprakasa Munivar, and Nyaya in Taruka Sangraham of Sivagnana Muniver.  The Vedanta is expounded in many Tamil Works such as Kaivalyam of Thandavamurti and Gnanavasittam of Veerayalavanthar.  Agamic Shastras are classified into those that treat of the first three padas are Sivadharmothara, and Gnana-Shastras like the fourteen Siddhanta Shastras.  A long account is given of Sivagnanabodham.  It is the most authoritative work in Tamil, as it is a translation and exposition of the Sivagnanabodham of the Rourava Agama and is the Gnanasurya that gives light to the whole Tamil Siddhantic Literature.  A very elaborate commentary on this work was written by that illumined intellectual giant, Sivagnana Munivar, in whose sishya line the author of the Prakasikai had the privilege to be.

The concluding chapter of the Prakasikai begins with a section on the importance and value of learning and proceeds to give an account of the right methods of teaching and learning, some of which are yet new to the pedagogic works of the west.  It ends with a course of studies in three progressive grades the last of which includes religious literature and philosophy.

Jaffna,  Sri.S.Shivapadasundaram, B.A.,
13th Chittrai of Prabhava.(1927)"                                                                                                                                 

[Quelle: Sabapathy Navalar (shaivam.net). -- Zugriff am 2021-11-02. -- Fair use]

1899

Tod von Gurazada Srirama Murty (Telugu గురజాడ శ్రీరామమూర్తి - Gurajāḍa śrīrāmamūrti, 1851 - 1891). Verfasser von కవి జీవితములు - Kavi jīvitamulu (Lives of [Telugu] poets). Darin beginnt er mit einem Appell [విజ్ఞాపనము] an తెలుగు దేశ భాష అభిమానులు "those having affection for or pride in the language of the Telugu country"

[Quelle: Mitchell, Lisa (1966 - ): Language, emotion, and politics in South India : The making of a mother tongue. -- Blommington : Indiana U.Pr., 2009. -- 281 S. : Ill. -- S. 11. -- Fair use]

1900

Oxford: Es erscheint:

The Tiruvāçagam : or 'Sacred utterances' of the Tamil poet, saint and sage Māņikka-Vāçagar ; the Tamil text of the fifty-one poems with English translation, introduction and notes ; to which is prefixed a summary of the life and legends of the sage, with appendices illustrating the great South-Indian system of philosophy and religion called The Çaiva Siddhāntam ; with Tamil lexicon and concordance / by G. U. (George Uglow)  Pope [1820 - 1908]. -- Oxford : Clarendon, 1900. -- XCVII + 354 + 84 S. -- Online: The Tiruvacagam; or, 'Sacred utterances' of the Tamil poet, saint, and sage Manikka-Vacagar: the Tamil text of the fifty-one poems, with English translation : Manikkavacakar, 9th cent : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive


Abb.: Englischsprachiges Titelblatt


Abb.: Tamil Titelblatt


Abb.: Seite 1

PREFACE.

It has been repeatedly asked, ‘Of what possible use can the republication, translation, and editing of books like the Tiruvāçagam be?’—and, ‘Who can be expected, to desire to make themselves acquainted with such works?’ This consideration has delayed the publication for some time; and it is not at all to be anticipated that the circulation of the book, at least in Europe, will, for some time to come, be encouraging. Still, this is a work that ought to be done! If the Tamil people and the English are ever in any degree to understand one another, and to appreciate each other’s thoughts and feelings regarding the highest matters; if any progress is to be made in the developement of a real science of Hinduism, as it now is, our English people must have the means of obtaining some insight into the living system which exercises at the present day such a marvellous power over the minds of the great majority of the best Tamil people.

For, under some form or other, Çaivism is the real religion of the South of India, and of North Ceylon; and the Çaiva Siddhānta philosophy has, and deserves to have, far more influence than any other. The fifty-one poems which are here edited, translated, and annotated, are recited daily in all the great Çaiva temples of South India, are on every one’s lips, and are as dear to the hearts of vast multitudes of excellent-people there, as the Psalms of David are to Jews and Christians. The sacred mystic poetry of a people reveals their character and aspirations more truly than even their secular legends and ballads; for sacred hymns are continually sung by the devout of all ages, and both sexes; and all classes of the community are saturated with their influence. The attentive consideration of the system here developed must lead to a sympathetic appreciation of what the hopes, fears, aspirations, and yearnings of the devoutest Hindu minds in the South are, and have been from time immemorial. I have occasionally ventured in notes to go beyond the province of editor and translator, and have criticized many things here and there; yet I feel quite sure that my kind and candid friends in South India will be in no danger of misunderstanding the spirit in which I have written. These are times when in regard to all religious systems thorough rational investigation, searching historical criticism, and a careful candid consideration of the meaning of the symbols by which doctrines are supposed to be expressed, are quite necessary everywhere. The result of this searching, yet reverent, analysis has been and is,—ever more and more,—of the utmost value in the West. Whatever is true will bear the test of the severest scrutiny, though men may feel obliged from time to time to modify the expressions of their belief, and to readjust their most cherished formulas. There is an evolution of religion. Meanwhile, true Divine faith lives on, and grows more vigorously for the conflicts in which it is ever, of necessity, engaged.

It is much to be desired that our friends in South India should recognize this, and consent to enter upon a thorough scientific investigation of the historical foundations of their popular beliefs, the precise import of symbolical expressions, and the practical bearing of every portion of their wonderful ‘ Siddhāntam.’

In matters of religion the greatest hindrance,—and the most truly irreligious thing,—is the spirit of ignorant, unreasoning, unsympathetic antagonism. Every system has its truths and profounder thoughts; and these lie deeper than 'full fathoms five’ in man’s nature; and must be fundamentally and essentially in large measure the same for all men, and for all time. It is only by recognizing these common truths, and making them the basis of inquiry, as to further alleged Divine communications, that it is possible to gain a true religious developement.

Very many things celebrated in these remarkable poems are doubtless without even the shadow of historic foundation, but it is yet possible to feel a lively interest in some, at least, of them as poetic fancies. What seems graceful and touching to one people often excites laughter, or scorn, or even detestation, among others. So, in regard to symbols, it is quite certain that many expressions, figures of speech, and allegories, very dear to peoples in the West, have no significance whatever to those of the East. And very, very much that seems to Oriental minds edifying, is repellent to those of the West. Still, I think the time has really come when thoughtful and candid people may do much to remove the hindrances, that undoubtedly exist, to the closer union of the convictions and sentiments of devout men in East and West. I may add that nothing can be further from my purpose in this work, and more utterly distasteful to me, than theological controversy; and if in this work any one word of mine should give pain to any of my valued Tamil friends, I ask forgiveness in advance.

It seems also most desirable that all Europeans whose lot it is to dwell in the Tamil lands, or who anywhere set themselves to benefit their Tamil fellow-subjects,—and especially missionaries and teachers,—should take pains to know accurately the feelings and convictions of those for whom, and in the midst of whom, they work. For many years I have not ceased to say,—there in India, and here in Oxford,—to successive classes of students,

'You must learn not only to think in Tamil, but also to feel in Tamil, if you are to be intelligible and useful among the Tamil people.’

This publication (the fruit of much weary toil) may help, it is trusted, all who desire to be helped, along this certainly difficult road.

It must be confessed, moreover, that I very earnestly wish also that my valued Tamil friends may be led to make the closer acquaintance of some of the magnificent collections of ‘sacred poetry’ existing in English. And this not only for the benefit (which must be great) of the individual student, but of Tamil literature. For no literature can stand alone.

I may safely take it for granted that my indulgent Tamil friends will not shrink from these Christian compositions, because they are full of the unstinted praises of Him Whom all acknowledge as the noblest, purest, best, and most self-sacrificing of those who have worn the garment of our mortality,—any more than I have shrunk from long and appreciative study of poems containing very much with which I can have but scanty sympathy.

'Scrutinize all things: hold fast that which is good!’

I may add that my experience as a translator has taught me that to get even a glimpse of the thought of a real poet, the student must often go down into the depths, must use every means to put himself in sympathy with his author, must learn to think and feel with him, and so—it may be—at last come to understand him.

Some German and Latin hymns were translated 150 years ago by that wonderful Tamil scholar and poetic genius, the missionary Fabricius; and ' Fabricius' hymn-book ’ [Hymnologien Deutsch-Tamil, 1763] has been, and deserved to be, the basis of nearly all the Christian Tamil hymnology. Though it is hardly classical, it is so vigorous and real in its tone, that it does not seem likely ever to lose its hold upon the affections of the Tamil Christian community. Nevertheless it is to be earnestly desired that the transfusion of much great European and sacred poetry into popular, easy, rhythmic Tamil verse resembling that of Māņikka-Vāçagar, should be attempted. If a foreigner has bestowed infinite pains (would that it had been with greater results!) on the study of the Tiruvāçagam, perhaps some of the native scholars of South India, versed in English and Tamil, may be induced to inquire whether they cannot find fitting material for study, imitation, and translation in that inexhaustible mine of beauty and profound thought which is opened up in English sacred verse, from the Hebrew psalms down to the Christian poetry of the present day. Nothing of this sort can be expected to live and be effective among a people if not expressed in their own vernacular language, the ' vulgar tongue,’ ' in which they were born.’

The speech of a dying people may, perhaps, be allowed to die; but this cannot be said of the Tamil race. Heaven forbid!

Dead languages have great uses. ' Even in their ashes live their wonted fires.’ De mortuis nil nisi bonum !—yet, in many ways, the living tongues are better! One cannot tell what flowers may yet bloom, what fruits may yet ripen, on the hardy old trees. Let Tamilians cease to be ashamed of their vernacular!

There exists now much of what is called Christian Tamil, a dialect created by the Danish missionaries of Tranquebar enriched by generations of Tanjore, German, and other missionaries; modified, purified, and refrigerated by the Swiss Rhenius and the very composite Tinnvelly school; expanded and harmonized by Englishmen, amongst whom Bower (a Eurasian) was foremost in his day; and, finally, waiting now for the touch of some heaven-born genius among the Tamil community to make it as sweet and effective as any language on earth, living or dead.

Of that unique genius Beschi (see Preface to my Kurraļ, for a history of this great man), and of De Nobilibus, and (in after days) of Ellis and Stokes,—with a multitude of others, such as Drew, Caldwell, and Percival, who advanced Tamil culture,— space forbids me here to speak.

Beschi—with his unnamed collaborators —has left what is a literature in itself, but—except certain prose books—tending more and more to become obsolete.                         

There has been at least one real native Christian poet, Vēthanāyaga Sāstriār [வேதநாயகம் சாஸ்திரியார், 1774 - 1864] of Tanjore, whose writings should be collected and edited. Christian lyrics, of unequal value, abound. Mr. Webb, an able American missionary of Madura, did much to develope these. The ‘ Pilgrim’s Progress ’ has been versified; and the first book of ‘ Paradise Lost,’ by V. P. Subramaņia Mudaliār, is a courageous attempt. Many more works might be cited, but this must suffice for Christian Tamil.

Amongst many others, Tirumūlar’s Tirumantra,Tāyumānavar’s poems, Pattaņattu Piļļai’s poems, the Dēvāram, the Tiruvicaipa Tiruviçaipā, with various articles in ‘The Light of Truth,’ by N. B. and by P. A., exhibit at once the capabilities and needs of popular Tamil poetry.

Of old classical Tamil and its stores I have spoken elsewhere.

I am afraid I cannot recall more than two recent works which seem to me to give promise of a veritable re-descent in more modern attire of the Tamil Sarasvatī.

The distinguished author of Manōmaņīyam, P. Suntharam Piļļai, has—too early for us—passed into the unseen. The copy he sent me (inscribed with characteristic modesty), ‘Submitted to —— with the author’s best respects,’ is to me a valued companion.

The little anonymous volume—a first instalment—entitled 'Tani-pāçura-togai’  seems to herald the advent of a new school to be heartily welcomed.

But Tamil—like Latin in the early Christian ages—must learn to adapt herself to the new order of things! Horace and Virgil would hardly have consented to part with their metrical system for the rhythms and rhymes of a later time; yet ‘Dies Irae’ and ‘Veni Spiritus,’ the poems of Richard and Adam of St. Victor, St. Bernard, and a multitude of others, came to dwell in the world’s heart for ever; while Dante and all the great Italians are Latins!

The work of translation was here and there difficult, and I had to compare a great number of similar verses to get at the meaning. An anonymous scholar, who has written the only commentary I know on the Tiruvāçagam, confesses himself at a loss to explain, among others, Poems I-IV. I have altered a few things in accordance with his interpretations, but have often seen reasons for differing. The work is very able and learned.

Generally my translation runs line for line with the original, and preserves something of its rhythm, where this did not interfere with fidelity to the sense.

Of the Tiruvāçagam itself nothing need be added to what is elsewhere said.

My thanks are due to the Secretary of State for India for a liberal subsidy; to the Delegates of the Clarendon Press; and to many Tamil friends (who do not desire their names to be mentioned).

A full list of subscribers and donors will be duly published.

To Mr. Pembrey (as in my former writings) I owe very much for his indefatigable co-operation.

I date this on my eightieth birthday. I find, by reference, that my first Tamil lesson was in 1837. This ends, as I suppose, a long life of devotion to Tamil studies. It is not without deep emotion that I thus bring to a close my life’s literary work.

Some years ago, when this publication was hardly projected, one evening, after prayers, the writer was walking with the late Master of Balliol College in the quadrangle. The conversation turned upon Tamil legends, poetry and philosophy. At length, during a pause in the conversation, the Master said in a quick way peculiar to him, ‘You must print it.’ To this the natural answer was, ‘Master! I have no patent of immortality, and the work would take very long.’ I can see him now, as he turned round,—while the moonlight fell upon his white hair and kindly face,—and laid his hand upon my shoulder, saying, ‘To have a great work in progress is the way to live long. You will live till you finish it.’ I certainly did not think so then, though the words have often come to my mind as a prophecy, encouraging me when weary; and they have been fulfilled, while he has passed out of sight.

To the memory of Benjamin Jowett, one of the kindest, and best, and most forbearing of friends,—to whom I owe, among much else, the opportunity of accomplishing this and other undertakings,—I venture to inscribe this volume with all gratitude and reverence.

May the blessing of his Master and mine crown the very imperfect work!

G. U. POPE
Balliol College, April 24, 1900."

[a.a.O., S. ix - xiv]

1901

Es erscheint:

D. Savariroyan Pillai (Tamil டி சவரிராயன் பிள்ளை - Ṭi Cavarirāyaṉ Piḷḷai): Some disputed points cleared. -- In.: Light of Truth or Siddanta Deepika.. - 5 (1901). -- S. 78 - 81 ; 194 - 200. -- Online: Siddhanta Deepika Volume 5 : Editors: J.M.Nallasami Pillai, V.V. Raman : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

Aus der Antwort an einen Brief von Julien Vinson (1843 - 1926):

"Coming now to the next point, the Professor declares that “Sanskrit was certainly formed.....even before Aryan speaking people had any contact with the Dravidian". Here is a point which seems to me to be in positive contradiction to facts. Before going further, I should like to know whether by Sanskrit language he means the Vedic language or the post-Sanskrit. Whatever he may mean, the Professor's proposition cannot stand. It is an admitted fact that the Vedic language, or the Aryan-primitive, was in a dialectical and uncultured stage when it was first met on the banks of the Indus and that the post-Sanskrit or the Aryan-derivative was developed in India, a long time after its introduction. Does not the Professor admit the fact that the Aryans, on their arrival at the N. W. frontier, found the Dravidians or Tamilians in flourishing communities ? Has it not been, not very long ago, pointed out by philologists that the cerebral sounds, which now abound throughout the Sanskrit Vocabulary, did not originally belong to the Aryan family of languages and was borrowed from the Dravidian tongues ? These facts, if admitted, lead one to naturally conclude that the after-development of the uncultured Vedic-tongue which resulted in Sanskrit was owing to the influence of the highly civilised Dravidian, when the former came into contact with the latter. If such be the case, I should like to know how the Professor would explain that Sanskrit was formed before the Aryans had any contact with the Tamilians, a theory which is contrary to history.

It is quite true as the Professor says that Hindi. Bengali etc. are the living representatives of Sanskrit. But I shall just request the Professor to remark the striking difference between Hindi, Bangali etc., the representatives of Sanskrit, and French, Spanish etc., the representatives of Latin. The difference is markedly shown by Dr. Oppert. (The Original Inhabitants of India page 10).

"This difference,” says he, "is easily observable when we compare on the one hand the construction of Sanskrit with that of such Aryanised languages, as Bangali and Marathi, which possess a considerable substratum of a non-Aryan element, and on the other hand, the construction of Latin with that of the Neo-Latin languages, French and Spanish, which may he considered as entirely Aryan”.

I observe that the basis of formation of the Sanskrit tongue is the same as that of its representatives. “The Phonetics, the Grammatical system, the general features, the derivation of words, and what is called the particular genius” are not, I dare say, quite special to Sanskrit ; in these respects, it agrees more with the Tamilian than with Latin, Greek etc.

[...]

The tradition asserts

  1. that there was a great, continent contiguous with South India covering the large portion of the Indian ocean to the South of Cape Comorin and it was the seat of a civilized nation and of a powerful dynasty for many centuries from very remote times;

  2. that the capital of the dynasty was the seat of an assembly of learned men first at South Mathurai [தென் மதுரை], second at Kabadapuram [கபாடபுரம்] or Alavai and the assembly of literati at South Mathurai is known as the First Sangam and that at Kapadapuram as the second and

  3. that there occurred then a great inundation which washed away the vast extent of land stretching from Cape Comorin southwards with all the literary productions of the time.

(1) The fact that a vast land existed south of Cape Comerin and was submerged by the flood receives great support from the modern sciences, Geology and Natural History, which prove the existence of a land south of India and its disappearance beyond the pale of doubt. "The Science of Man” "The Science of Man" (for December, 1900, Australia) says:—

“Ths locality of the origin of the earliest race from the most recent researches appears to have been on lands now submerged beneath the Indian Ocean.”

But centuries before the birth of Natural History and Geology, this old tradition was recorded in the Ancient Tamilian classics. Therefore the Professor is obliged to give credit by all means to this tradition corroborated by modem sciences and discoveries. That the Tamilians even in those early days possessed an extensive literature will strike every one who goes through any extant old commentary of any one of the Tamil classical works. The learning and the knowledge displayed by the commentator, the highly polished and classical fragments of quotations and names of old standard works on grammar, theology, metaphysics, ethics etc. mentioned therein, all go to impress strongly, when compared with the meagre portion that is left to us, the possibility of a vast store of ancient literature displaying considerable erudition and the sense of the loss that Tamil has sustained by a great catastrophe. The lost works of which there seem to have been quite an ocean pass in view before us and remind us of the ancient grandeur and wealth of Tamil. This fact also cannot but be admitted by our Professor."

[a.a.O., S. 194f. ; 198f.]

1902

Es erscheint:

முதலூழி சேந்தன் தனியூர் (Mutalūḻi Cēntaṉ Taṉiyūr [Pseudonym]): Ceṅkōṉṟaraiccelavu. -- 10 S.

"Further, the recovery of the Ettuttokai and the Pattuppattu also fanned the hope that if these lost works could be found, why not others? This accounts for the great excitement over the publication in 1902 of a slim book, not more than ten printed pages long, entitled Cenkonraraiccelavu, which claimed to be some verses of a longer poem of the first academy of antediluvian Tenmaturai [தென்மதுரை]. As one enthusiast wondered,

“It is not clear why such an ancient text with such rich information has been not been mentioned by any of the old commentaries. It reeks of antiquity.”

The author of the poem styled himself “Mutaluli Centan Taniyur” (Chentan who lived in Taniyur [தனியூர்] before the first deluge), and his verses commemorated some of the exploits of his patron, the antediluvian Tamil king Sengon, who ruled the region called Peruvalanatu that stretched between the rivers Kumari and Pahruli, now lost to the ocean. Here is Chidambaranar who, years after the publication of this work, is barely able to contain his excitement over—and his own involvement in—its recovery:

The above said book was discovered by me from some old cudgan [sic] leaves and it was copied out and kept ready for publication with some notes. If it comes out, the oldest civilisation of the Tamilians will be known to everybody. Emperor Sengon . . . maintain[ed] battle ships and fought many battles overseas with the help of his dreadnought. Emperor Sengone was reigning in the submerged land called continent of Lamoria [sic]. His original home was Olinadu which was situated south of Equator, i.e., thousand miles south of present Ceylon. . . . Emperor Sengone conquered lands as far as Tibet and planted his Bull flag on the Himalayas. This was sung in Sengone Taraichelavu. Continent of Lamoria was called Tamilagam [தமிழகம்] by the Tamilians. Many pandits and scientists hold the opinion that the human species first evolved in the Great Indo-African Continent. . . . This large continent is of great importance for being the probable cradle of the human race.

Although the Cenkonraraiccelavu was declared a forgery by the eminent S. Vaiyapuri Pillai in the 1950s, who noted that

“no responsible scholar now takes any serious notice of it,”

this has not deterred Tamil labors of loss from invoking its veracity till this day. The 1981 government film even declared it to be the “world’s first travelogue,” which it details at some length."

[Quelle: Sumathi Ramaswamy [சுமதி ராமஸ்வாமி]: The lost land of Lemuria : Fabulous geographies, catastrophic histories. -- Berkeley : Univ. of California Pr., 2004. -- 334 S. : Ill. -- S. 116f. -- Fair use]

1903

Es erscheint:

Monahan, C. H.: A History of the Tamil Language : Review of A History of the Tamil Language, by V. K. Suryanarayana Sastri. -- In: Madras Christian College Magazine 21 (1903/04)

"In a scathing review of Suryanarayana Sastri’s [வி. கோ. சூரியநாராயண சாஸ்திரியார, 1870 - 1903] Tamilmoliyin Varalaru [தமிழ்மொழியின் வரலாறு] (which, to recall, was the first sustained effort to link the metropolitan paleo-scientist’s Lemuria with a submerged Tamil home-place called Kumarinatu [குமரிநாடு]), published shortly after the book appeared in 1903, the Reverend C. H. Monahan took the influential Tamil scholar-devotee to task for not abiding “by the principles of scientific philology.” Instead,

he allows an amount of weight to mythological elements which renders his judgement on the antiquity of Tamil to my mind almost worthless. He practically accepts the story dear to some Tamilians that in ancient times land extended south of Cape Comorin for some 7,000 miles (!), which was divided into 49 Tamil countries. In this land were South Madura and other places where Tamil flourished. This country now submerged by the Indian Ocean was the cradle of the human race, and its language was Tamil(!). Haeckel is quoted as authority for this opinion. All this is a sore tax on one’s power of belief. But one fairly gasps when one reads the following . . . :

“The Indian Ocean contains 25,000,000 square miles. From this it follows that it is somewhat less than 1,600,000 miles long and 1,600, 000 miles broad(!). Accordingly of this 1,600,000 miles length, 7,000 miles of land must have been swept away by the sea(!!!).”

One would have supposed the numbers to be due to a mere slip of the pen but for the serious argument based upon them. Moreover, we are informed that the Early Tamil Academy lasted 4,440 years and the Middle Academy 3,700. These geographical and historical(?) marvels come of abandoning scientific research for mythology."

[Quelle: Sumathi Ramaswamy [சுமதி ராமஸ்வாமி]: The lost land of Lemuria : Fabulous geographies, catastrophic histories. -- Berkeley : Univ. of California Pr., 2004. -- 334 S. : Ill. -- S. 223f. -- Fair use]

1903-11-02

Madras (Tamil மதராஸ்): Tod von Parithimar Kalaignar (Tamil பரிதிமாற் கலைஞர் - Paritimāṟ kalaiñar, 1870 - 1903)


Abb.: Briefmarke, 2007
[Wikimedia / GODL]

V. G. Suryanarayana Sastri (வி. கோ. சூரியநாராயண சாஸ்திரியார்)
 
Born 6 July 1870
Vilacheri near ThirupparankundramMadura DistrictBritish India
Died 2 November 1903 (aged 33)
Madras, British India
Pen name Parithimar Kalaignar, Dravida Sastri
Occupation Tamil pundit
Language Tamil

Verfasste 1898 die erste einheimische Geschichte des Tamil auf Grundlage der europäischen vergleichenden Sprachwissenschaft:

தமிழ்மொழியின் வரலாறு - Tamiḻmoḻiyiṉ varalāṟu (History of the Tamil language)

"Similarly, V. G. Suryanarayana Sastri, a novelist and essayist who in 1902 was the first devotee to vehemently demand recognition of Tamil’s “classical” status, is much praised. Brahman he may nominally have been, but in his தமிழ்மொழியின் வரலாறு [History of the Tamil language] (1903), Suryanarayana Sastri offered a spirited defense of the autonomy, originality, and uniqueness of Tamil, refusing to subordinate the language to Sanskrit in any realm.

Suryanarayanan was born into an orthodox Smarta Brahman family of Vilacceri near Madurai in 1870. His father was a scholar of Sanskrit, and Suryanarayanan formally studied the language from his early youth. It was not until he went to high school, however, that his love for Tamil was really kindled, and by the time he was twenty, he was learned enough to start writing literary pieces. In 1890, he moved to Madras for his college education, and he graduated with top honors. Although he could have had any job for the asking, as a true devotee of Tamil he chose to become a Tamil pandit, low salary and all, at Madras Christian College. Over the next decade, he became renowned not just for his mastery of literary Tamil but also for his attempts to introduce innovative ideas, from English literature, into Tamil prose, plays, and poetry. Yet he never let his admiration for English compromise his love for Tamil: indeed, his fellow devout recall with delight that as a student, when challenged by one of his English professors, he had declared that Kamban’s verse from centuries before was superior to Tennyson’s. Not surprisingly, for all his work he won the admiration of the famed scholar and fellow devotee Damodaram Pillai, who bestowed upon him the title tiravita castiri [திராவிட சாஸ்திரி], “Dravidian Brahman scholar,” a title which even in those days already appeared oxymoronic (N. Subramanian 1950). And he became a close associate of another Tamil litterateur and fellow devotee, M. S. Purnalingam Pillai, whose journal, Nanapotini, he helped co-edit and who declared, when Suryanarayanan died young at thirty-three in 1903, that he had become a “martyr to Tamil” (Purnalingam Pillai 1985: 347).

Suryanarayanan’s reputation as Tamil adherent also rests on a singular act that has elicited much admiration from successive generations of the devout. In 1899, in an anthology in which he attempted to introduce the sonnet into Tamil poetry for the first time, he adopted the pen name “Paritimal Kalainar [பரிதிமாற் கலைஞர],” the pure Tamil rendering of his own given (Sanskritic) name. In his preface to the text, he was clear about why he did this; he was worried about his innovation and was keen on getting his fellow scholars’ frank criticisms of his attempt. The work went on to elicit much enthusiasm, and its second edition was published with its author’s Sanskritic name (N. Subramanian 1950: 81-84). Although he was hailed as a founder of the taṉittamiḻ [தனித்தமிழ் - pure Tamil]  movement by some later devotees, his critics fault him for using his pure Tamil name only once; they also point out that his plays and novels featured characters bearing Sanskritic names, and his own Tamil was inflected with Sanskrit (Tirumaran 1992: 118-23)."

[Quelle: Sumathi Ramaswamy [சுமதி ராமஸ்வாமி]: Passions of tongue : Language devotion in Tamil India 1891 - 1970. -- Berkeley : Univ. of California Pr., 1997. -- S. 199f.. -- Fair use]

1904

Madras (Tamil மதராஸ் ; Telugu మద్రాస్): Es erscheint:

M. S. Purnalingam Pillai (Tamil மு. சி. பூரணலிங்கம் பிள்ளை - Mu. Ci. Pūraṇaliṅkam Piḷḷai, 1866 - 1947): A primer of Tamil literature. -- Madras : Ananda, 1904. -- 218 S. -- Online: A Primer of Tamil Literature : Purnalingam Pillai, M. S., 1866- : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

"I .—THE AGE OF THE SANGAMS.
Up to 100 A. D.

1. Introduction.—Three Sangams or Academies are alleged to have existed in the Tamil country at three different periods doing the work of literary censors. According to Nakkirar’s commentary on Irayanar’s Ahapporul where the first account of these colleges of poets occurs, the three Sangams held their sessions at the Madura in ruins, Kapadapuram, and in the modern Madura respectively, dragged on their existence for about ten thousand years, presided over by one hundred and ninety-seven kings, consisted of no fewer than six hundred and fifty seven syndics, and sat in judgment on the literary productions of nearly eight thousand and seven hundred poets. This account found favour with Nacchinarkinyar who gave currency to it in his commentary on Tholkappiyam, and it was repeated by Adiarkunallar when he commented on Silappathikaram. In this way it has been handed down to modern times. But now it is challenged by critical scholars, both Indian and European, on the ground that it is full of improbabilities and inconsistencies and draws too much on the marvellous as it gives an incredible longevity to each poet and prince who had anything to do with the Sangams. They believe that these Academies must have been the figments of some poetic imagination akin to that of Vallala Senan in his Bhoja Prabandam, where Sanskrit poets of totally different times—Kalidasa, Bharavi, Mahan, Bhavabhuti, Bhana, Thandi, and others—are made to assemble in the Court of King Bhoja and to pour forth panegyrics on his devoted head.

“ It is of course open to doubt,’’ wrote Professor Sundaram Pillai, “whether there ever existed a regularly constituted body of pundits and poets, which may be called a College in our modern sense of the word ; but that a number of brilliant men of genius rose and flourished soon after the memorable victory of Thalai Alankanam, and at intervals from one another so short that in the perspective of posterity they appear to have formed but one grand galaxy — one single group or College—it would be the height of scepticism to question.”

But the question of their existence cannot be easily decided until the researches of the archaeological society in South India bring to light facts and materials enough to explain away the apparent improbabilities and contradictions. Till then the commentators’ account will bear sway and must be accepted cum grano salis. The following venba [வெண்பா] of the Sangam age gives the number of the syndics and poets of each Sangam."

[a.a.O., S. 8f.]

1904

London: Es erscheint:

William Scott-Elliot (1849 - 1919): The lost Lemuria. -- London : Theosophical Publishing Society, 1904. -- 44 S. "With two maps showing distribution of laNd areas at different periods.". -- Online: The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Story of Atlantis and the Lost Lemuria, by W. Scott-Elliot

"FOREWORD.

The object of this paper is not so much to bring forward new and startling information about the lost continent of Lemuria and its inhabitants, as to establish by the evidence obtainable from geology and from the study of the relative distribution of living and extinct animals and plants, as well as from the observed processes of physical evolution in the lower kingdoms, the facts stated in the "Secret Doctrine" and in other works with reference to these now submerged lands."


Abb.: Map no. 1: Lemuria at its greatest extent


Abb.: Map no. 2: Lemuria at a later period

1904

Es erscheint:

Rudolf Steiner (1861 - 1925): Die Lemurische Rasse. -- In: Lucifer-Gnosis <Berlin>. -- Wieder abgedruckt in Aus der Akasha-Chronik : Rudolf Steiner : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive. -- S. 57 - 73

"DIE LEMURISCHE RASSE

Hier wird ein Stück aus der Akasha-Chronik mitgeteilt, das sich auf eine sehr ferne Urzeit in der Menschheitsentwickelung bezieht. Diese Zeit geht derjenigen voraus, welche in den vorhergehenden Darstellungen geschildert worden ist. Es handelt sich um die dritte menschliche Wurzelrasse, von welcher in theosophischen Büchern gesagt wird, daß sie den lemurischen Kontinent bewohnt hat. Dieser Kontinent lag — im Sinne dieser Bücher — im Süden von Asien, dehnte sich aber ungefähr von Ceylon bis Madagaskar aus. Auch das heutige südliche Asien und Teile von Afrika gehörten zu ihm. — Wenn auch beim Entziffern der „Akasha-Chronik“ alle mögliche Sorgfalt angewendet worden ist, so muß doch betont werden, daß nirgends für diese Mitteilungen irgendwelcher dogmatischer Charakter in Anspruch genommen werden soll. Ist schon das Lesen von Dingen und Ereignissen, welche dem gegenwärtigen Zeitalter so fernliegen, nicht leicht, so bietet die Übersetzung des Geschauten und Entzifferten in die gegenwärtige Sprache fast unübersteigliche Hindernisse. — Zeitangaben werden später gemacht werden. Sie werden besser verstanden werden, wenn die ganze lemurische Zeit und auch noch diejenige unserer (fünften) Wurzelrasse bis zur Gegenwart durchgenommen sein werden. — Die Dinge, die hier mitgeteilt werden, sind auch für den Okkultisten, der sie zum ersten Male liest, überraschend — obgleich das Wort nicht ganz zutreffend ist. Deshalb darf er sie nur nach der sorgfältigsten Prüfung mitteilen."

[a.a.O., S. 57]

1904-03-17

Linguistic Survey of India (1906), Sten Konow (1867 - 1948), Edward Albert Gait (1863 - 1950), George Abraham Grierson (1851 - 1941), zur Drawidenfrage:

"The authoritative Linguistic Survey of India (1903-28) barely hints at Lemuria in its volume on the Dravidian and Munda languages:

“With regard to the Dravidas, some authorities believe that they arrived in India from the south, while others suppose them to have entered it from the north-west” (Grierson 1906, 5).

Sten Konow, the Sanskritist who edited this volume doubted that Dravidians were the original inhabitants of the subcontinent, noting in a letter to George Grierson, the director of the project, that,

 “I do not think that the present distribution of Mundas and Dravidas affords any clue as to which of them first came to India. But I think that such a clue is furnished by the fact that the Mundas are connected with those tribes which must be supposed to be the oldest inhabitants of Further India” (India Office Library, Grierson Papers, S/1/1/7, letter dated March 4, 1904).

In response to this claim, Edward Gait, the then-Census Commissioner retorted,

“The Dravidians (the race) are I believe generally regarded as the oldest inhabitants of India: they are allied to the African Negro and probably came from the south by way of the submerged continent of Lemuria” (India Office Library, Grierson Papers, S/1/1/7, letter dated March 17, 1904).

Grierson himself was remarkably reticent on this issue, only noting in passing after commenting on the profusion of languages in the subcontinent that,

“Over all, there broods the glamour of eastern mystery. Through all of them we hear the inarticulate murmur of past ages, of ages when the Aryans wandered with their herds across the steppes of Central Asia, when the Indo-Chinese had not yet issued from their home on the Tang-tse-Kiang, and perhaps when there existed the Lemurian continent where now sweep the restless waves of the Indian ocean” (Grierson 1903, 342)."
 

[Quelle: Sumathi Ramaswamy [சுமதி ராமஸ்வாமி]: The lost land of Lemuria : Fabulous geographies, catastrophic histories. -- Berkeley : Univ. of California Pr., 2004. -- 334 S. : Ill. -- S. 266, Anm. 21. -- Fair use]

1906/1907

Es erscheint:

J. M. Nallaswami Pillai (Tamil நல்லசுவாமி பிள்ளை - Nallacuvāmi piḷḷai, 1864 - 1920): Ourselves. -- In The Light of Truth, or Siddhanta Deepika 7, S. 25 -31. -- Online: Siddhanta Deepika Volume 7 : Editors: J.M.Nallasami Pillai, V.V. Raman : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

Ourselves.

We had set forth our high aims in our first number in the following words .—

“Our Journal will devote itself to bring out translation of rare works in Sanskrit and Tamil, both literary and philosophical and religious, will devote its pages to a more critical and historical study of Indian Religious Systems, to develop a taste for and to induce a proper and more appreciative cultivation of our Indian Classical and Vernacular Languages and Literature, to bring into the Tamil all that is best and noblest in the literature and the philosophy of the West, to supply to it its deficiency in the field of science and history, ancient and modern. Greater attention will be paid to the language and the history of South India, and the Dravidian philosophy and religion will find their best exposition in its pages; and in this respect, it is intended to supply a real and absolutely important want. Being fully aware of the fact what a small minority we will be addressing if our Magazine be conducted wholly in English and being aware that no real improvement in the condition of the people can be effected except by means of their own vernacular and being anxious to preserve to them this much at least of their natural birthright, the love of their own language, we have resolved to bring out a Tamil edition of the Magazine to extend its usefulness among all classes of the South Indian Community and to impart to them the benefits of Western research and knowledge and to infuse into them corrector notions of science and history and scientific and historical criticism.’’

"In regard to its policy, it is intended to conduct the Journal on the broadest and most innocuous lines consistent with the objects of the Magazine as above set forth. It is needless to observe that we shall religiously eschew all politics, and the only politics shall be, if ever there be any occasion, to appeal to the innate loyalty of every Indian, bound up as it is with his deeply rooted religions instinct, which cannot leave him even in his bitterest extremes. In social matters, we are fully alive to the manifold evils (adyatmikam, adiboudhikam, adidaivikam) existing in our society, we are positively convinced also that caste and custom overrides all determinations of science and religion and real piety, and we will not be afraid to speak truth in the plainest terms. But let not the orthodox stare and frown. We can be really as conservative in our heart and deed and we will lose nothing by giving up or gradually changing some of our pernicious and useless customs. We will assure them, however, that we will strictly guard their religion and sentiment and the preservation of their own habits and manners if they are not positively harmful. Nothing will be done to wound any body’s feelings unnecessarily and we will take care, however, not to Sacrifice scientific truth and honest conviction to mere absurd sentiment. We honour the past and we appreciate the present phase of our existence, at the same time. We feel it our duty to love our country and our people and our religion ; and at the same time we will not be blind to the excellence in the character of other nations and other religions. Let the Grace of God and the good will of our fellow-beings speed our wish and work.” And we may be pardoned if we congratulate ourselves on having achieved some measure of success in all these directions. In fact, the appearance of this magazine was synchronous with an increased and critical study of the Tamil language and literature and a deeper study of the religions of India. Stimulated chiefly by the Theosophical Society, there were any number of magazines and journals devoted to the study of Sanscrit and the exposition of the Vedanta Philosophy, which at best contained only an one-sided view of the Indian people and their beliefs. And many had felt the want and expressed a wish whether there was ever going to be a journal in English devoted to the study of Tamil Literature and Philosophy. Even with our ears, we have heard our Indian friends ask whether there was any philosophy in the Tamil language and literature, and. with the exception of a very few scholars, none of the European scholars knew anything about it, and much less cared to find out for themselves. A European missionary gentleman wrote to us from England to say that he repeatedly pressed on Professor Max Müller and Monier-Williams and others the claims of Tamil Literature and Philosophy but that they had turned a deaf ear to his prayers. He complained that great injustice was done to Tamil but hoped there would come a day when full justice would be done to its great merits and excellence. And it must be a source of considerable satisfaction to our friend that in his own lifetime the justice which he demanded was fully rendered by those very people who denied it at first. And it must be news to many that the conversion of such a veteran Sanscrit scholar as the late Professor Max Müller was all due to the tiny efforts of this magazine. The proprietors and editors of this journal were altogether unknown to the late Professor and they had never intruded on his notice except by sending him copies of this journal. We learnt casualiy from an Indian Civil Servant who met him in Oxford that the Professor was exercising his mind as to the particular features of this magazine, and that he made enquiries as to the persons who were conducting it. And it was with pleasurable feelings that we read the concluding paragraphs in his last great work on the Six Systems of Indian Philosophy which we extract below:—

“It is feared, however, that even this small remnant of philosophical learning will vanish in one or two generations, as the youths of the present day, even if belonging to orthodox Brahmanic families, do not take to these studies, as there is no encouragement.

But, though we may regret that the ancient method of philosophical study is dying out in India, we should welcome all the more a new class of native students who, after studying the history of European philosophy, have devoted themselves to the honorable task of making their own national philosophy better known to the world at large. I hope that my book may prove useful to them by showing them in what direction they may best assist us in our attempts to secure a place to thinkers such as Kapila and Badarayana by the side of the leading philosophers of Greece, Rome, Germany, France, Italy and England. In some cases, the enthusiasm of native students may seem to have carried too far, and a mixing up of philosophical with religious and theosophic propaganda, inevitable as it is said to be in India, is always dangerous. But such Journals as the Pundit, the Brahmavadin, THE LIGHT OF TRUTH and lately the Journal of the Buddhist Text Society, have been doing most valuable service. What we want are texts and translations, and any information that can throw light on the chronology of Indian Philosophy. Nor should their labour be restricted to Sanscrit texts. In the South of India, there exists a philosophical literature which, though it may show clear traces of Sanscrit influence, contains also original indigenous elements of great beauty and of great importance for historical purposes. Unfortunately, few scholars only have taken up, as yet, to the study of the Dravidian language and literature, but young students who complain that there is nothing left to do in Sanscrit literature, would, I believe, find their labours amply rewarded in that field.”

It will be noticed with what few other magazines this magazine is coupled; and how this journal has all through kept in view the importance of translations and retained its own independence, avoiding the snares and pitfalls referred to by the learned professor. We never hoped that he would in a moment forget his life-long partiality for Sanscrit, but we consider it a great gain that he should acknowledge the presence of original indigenous elements of great beauty and of great importance in the South Indian Philosophical Literature, and that with almost his dying breath, he should recommend to his students the study of the same and should tell them that their labours will be amply rewarded in this new field.

To recount the work we have done, a very large number of articles have appeared in its pages dealing with the Tamil literature, and language and philology and the age of several classical writers. The transition into English of two such colossal works as the Sivagnana Siddhiar and Sri Kanta Bashya have been accomplished, the latter nearing its completion almost; not to say of portions of Tirumantra and of a large number of hymns from the Devaram, Tayumanavar &c. A full exposition of the Siddhanta Philosophy has been given, and earnest students of every creed and religion have sought for knowledge and information in its pages and they have always found matters for greater agreement than difference and for more mutual appreciation than recrimination. And we are glad to know that the Saiva Siddhanta Philosophy is more widely known and much better appreciated than a decade ago. Following up our first article on the ancient Tamilian civilization, Pandit D. Savariroyan and his friends have opened up a dark page of South India’s past and great credit is due to them for carrying on their work, undeterred by the unreasoning opposition and prejudices of a large number. And we have heard it—that we have lost the sympathy of a few of our well-wishers and friends by permitting the publication of such articles. But we will appeal to their sense of justice and fairness for once. Did we not all read in our schooldays that the Tamilians were aborigines and savages, that they belonged to a dark race, a Turanian one, whom the mighty civilizing Aryans conquered and called Dasyus, and that all their religion, language and arts were copied from the noble Aryan. Even a few years ago. a great man from our sister Presidency held forth to a learned Madras audience how every evil in our society, whether moral, social or religious, was all due to the admixture of the civilized Aryan with the barbarous Tamilian. How much of this was true and how much of it did we relish and how much of it we did not ? We hope it is well-known now how recent researches of European Ethnologists and Linguists have exploded the postulates of Professor Max Muller and others who gave currency to the distinction of Turanians and Aryans, and how several tests of language and features have been found to be fallacious, and how, even in regard to all the tests, the Tamil race and language have stood as high as possible. The results are not yet definite, and more light is being thrown almost every day. This being so, can we not permit our Pandit and his friends to have their say and give them a good hearing ? All that we have got to do is to hear their facts, and to judge whether their inferences are sound. As it is, we know the Pandit has already a very large following among the Tamil public who fully appreciate his work. As the interest of science is alone concerned, it is absurd to take offence, where none was meant.

We trust therefore that our old friends and well-wishers will give us once more their strong support so that the old work may be carried on with renewed life and vigor.

[a.a.O.]

1908-02-12

Oxford: Tod von George_Uglow_Pope (1820 - 1908)

"And there was George Pope (1820-1908), beloved among Tamil’s enthusiasts for translating into English their most revered texts, the Tirukkural and the Tiruvacakam. Late in his life, Pope recalled a conversation he had with a “native friend in South India.” He reportedly said to him:

“I am going to live for Tamil. It shall be my great study; your people shall be my people; and I hope that my God will be theirs.’ The friend replied: ‘Sir, that is very delightful; but it means for you contempt and poverty.”

Tamil’s devout mention with delight that although he himself had declared that

“Tamil scholarship is the direct road to poverty,” Pope dedicated his entire life to the “service of Tamil” (Sethu Pillai 1964: 11).

Born in Nova Scotia in 1820, Pope and his family emigrated to England, where at fourteen he resolved to become a missionary. He set sail for India in 1838, reportedly studying Tamil for the first time on his eight-month voyage over. He became so good at it that he preached his first sermon in Tamil upon landing in Madras. Attached at first to the Wesleyan Missionary Society, he later joined the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. His base of operations was Sawyerpuram in Tirunelveli district, where he founded a seminary. Around 1850, now married, Pope moved to Tanjavur; there, under the tutelage of the Tamil poet and fellow Christian Vedanayaka Sastri (1774-1864), he immersed himself in the study of ancient Tamil literature. This was also the most productive of his years in India, when he wrote a number of Tamil handbooks, textbooks, and dictionaries. After stints in Ootacumand and Bangalore, he returned to England in 1880 and joined Oxford University in 1884, where he taught Tamil and Telugu. It is then that he published his translations of the Tirukkural (1886), the Nālaṭiyār (1893), a partial translation of the Manimekalai (1900), and, most important, the Tiruvacakam (1900). With great enthusiasm, an admirer, Saravana Pillai, greeted Pope’s translation of the Tiruvacakam:

Who is that great scholar who rendered into faultless English our divine Tamil Veda's truths in such a manner that even those who do not know the glorious Tamil may understand?
Born as jewel of the English land,
He has with affection embraced our precious
Tamiḻttāy [Tamil தமிழ்த்தாய் = Mutter Tamil] as his foster mother.
He is a worthy Christian preceptor.
He is the notable who bears the name Pope

(quoted in Sethu Pillai 1964: 18)

Although Pope did not die in the Tamil country nor is he buried there, Tamil enthusiasts mention with satisfaction that he had insisted that his epitaph should bear the phrase tamil manavan [தமிழ் மாணவன்], “student of Tamil.”"

[Quelle: Sumathi Ramaswamy [சுமதி ராமஸ்வாமி]: Passions of tongue : Language devotion in Tamil India 1891 - 1970. -- Berkeley : Univ. of California Pr., 1997. -- S. 193f. -- Fair use]

1909

Seattle: Es erscheint

Max Heindel (1865 - 1919): The Rosicrucian Cosmo-Conception ; or, Christian occult science : an elementary treatise upon man's past evolution, present constitution and future development. -- Seattle: Rosicrucian Fellowship, 1909. --- 536 S. : Ill. -- Online: The Rosicrucian cosmo-conception; or, Christian occult science, an elementary treatise upon man's past evolution, present constitution and future development : Heindel, Max, 1865-1919 : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive


Abb.: Titelblatt

Seine Lehre über Lemuria unterscheidet sich sehr von der tamilischen Auffassung von Lemuria/Kumarikkandam [Tamil குமரிக்கண்டம்]:

"The Lemurian Race.

We are now in a position to understand the information which is to follow concerning the people who lived in the latter part of the Lemurian Epoch, whom we may call the Lemurian Race.

The atmosphere of Lemuria was still very dense—somewhat like the fire-fog of the Moon Period, but denser. The crust of the Earth was just starting to become quite hard and solid in some places, while in others it was still fiery, and between islands of crust was a sea of boiling, seething water. Volcanic outbursts and cataclysms marked this time when the nether fires fought hard against the formation of the encircling wall which was to imprison them.

Upon the harder and comparatively cool spots man lived surrounded by giant fern-forests and animals of enormous size. The forms of both man and animal were yet quite plastic. The skeleton had formed, but man himself had great power in molding the flesh of his own body and that of the animals about him.

When he was born he could hear and feel, but his perception of light came later. We have analogous cases in animals like cats and dogs, the young of which receive the sense of sight some time after birth. The Lemurian had no eyes. He had two sensitive spots which were affected by the light of the Sun as it shone dimly through the fiery atmosphere of ancient Lemuria, but it was not until nearly the close of the Atlantean Epoch that he had sight as we have it today. Up to that time the building of the eye was in progress. While the Sun was within—while the Earth formed part of the light-giving mass—man needed no external illuminant; he was luminous himself. But when the dark Earth was separated from the Sun it became necessary that the light should be perceived, therefore as the light-rays impinged upon man, he perceived them. Nature built the eye as a light-perceiver, in response to the demand of the already-existing function, which is invariably the case, as Professor Huxley has so ably shown. The amoeba has no stomach, yet it digests. It is all stomach. The necessity for digesting food built the stomach in the course of time, but digestion took place before the alimentary canal was formed. In an analogous manner, the perception of light called forth the eye. The light itself built the eye and maintains it. Where there is no light there can be no eye. In cases where animals have withdrawn and dwelt in caves—keeping away from the light—the eyes have degenerated and atrophied because there were no light rays to maintain them and no eyes were needed in the dark caves. The Lemurian needed eyes; he had a perception of light, and the light was commencing to build the eye in response to his demand.

His language consisted of sounds like those of Nature. The sighing of the wind in the immense forests which grew in great luxuriance in that super-tropical climate, the rippling of the brook, the howling of the tempest—for Lemuria was storm-swept—the thunder of the waterfall, the roar of the volcano—all these were to him voices of the Gods from whom he knew himself to have descended.

Of the birth of his body he knew nothing. He could not see either it or anything else, but he did perceive his fellow-beings. It was, however, an inner perception, like our perception of persons and things in dreams, but with this very important difference, that his dream-perception was clear and rational.

Thus he knew nothing at all about his body, in fact he did not even know he had a body any more than we know we have a stomach when that organ is in good health. We remember its existence only when our abuse of it causes us to feel pain there. Under normal conditions we are entirely unconscious of its processes. Similarly did the body of the Lemurian serve him excellently, although he was unaware of its existence. Pain was the means of making him aware of his body and of the world without.

Everything in connection with the propagation of the race and the bringing to birth was done by direction of the Angels under the leadership of Jehovah, the Regent of the Moon. The propagative function was performed at stated times of the year when the lines of force, running from planet to planet, were focussed at proper angles. Thus the creative force encountered no obstruction and parturition was painless. Man was unaware of birth, because at that time he was as unconscious of the physical world as he now is during sleep. It was only in the intimate contact of sex relation that the spirit became aware of the flesh and the man “knew” his wife. That is shown in such passages of the Bible as “Adam knew Eve and she bore Seth”; “Elkanah knew Hannah and she bore Samuel”; and Mary’s question, “How shall I conceive, seeing I know no man?” This is also the key to the meaning of the “Tree of Knowledge,” the fruit of which opened the eyes of Adam and Eve, so that they came to know both good and evil. Previously they had known only good, but when they began to exercise the creative function independently, they were ignorant of stellar influences, as are their descendants, and Jehovah’s supposed curse was not a curse at all, but a simple statement of the result which must inevitably follow use of the generative force which failed to take into consideration the effect of the stellar rays on childbirth.

Thus the ignorant use of the generative force is primarily responsible for pain, sickness and sorrow.

The Lemurian knew no death because when, in the course of long ages, his body dropped away, he entered another, quite unconscious of the change. His consciousness was not focussed in the physical world, therefore the laying aside of one body and the taking of another was no more to him than a leaf or twig drying and falling away from the tree and being replaced by a new growth.

Their language was to the Lemurians something holy. It was not a dead language like ours—a mere orderly arrangement of sounds. Each sound uttered by the Lemurian had power over his fellow-beings, over the animals and even over nature around him. Therefore, under the guidance of the Lords of Venus, who were the messengers of God—the emissaries of the creative hierarchies—the power of speech was used with great reverence, as something most holy.

The education of the boys differed greatly from that of the girls. The Lemurian methods of education seem shocking to our more refined sensibilities. In order to spare the reader’s feelings, only the least cruel of them will be touched upon. Strenuous in the extreme as they may seem, it must be remembered that the Lemurian body was not nearly so high-strung as are the human bodies of the present day; also that it was only by the very harshest measures that the exceedingly dim consciousness could be touched at all. As time went on and the consciousness became more and more awakened, such extreme measures as those used then became unnecessary and have passed away, but at that time they were indispensable to arouse the slumbering forces of the spirit to a consciousness of the outside world.

The education of the boys was designed especially to develop the quality of Will. They were made to fight one another, and these fights were extremely brutal. They were impaled upon spits, with full power to release themselves, but by exercising the will-power they were to remain there in spite of the pain. They learned to make their muscles tense, and to carry immense burdens by the exercise of the Will.

The education of the girls was intended to promote the development of the imaginative faculty. They also were subjected to strenuous and severe treatment. They were put out in the great forests, to let the sound of the wind in the tree-tops speak to them and to listen to the furious outbursts of flood and tempest. They thus learned to have no fear of those paroxysms of nature and to perceive only the grandeur of the warring elements. The frequent volcanic outbursts were greatly valued as a means of education, being particularly conducive to the awakening of the faculty of memory.

Such educational methods would be entirely out of the question at the present day, but they did not make the Lemurian morbid, because he had no memory. No matter what painful or terrifying experiences he endured, everything was forgotten as soon as past. The above-mentioned strenuous experiences were for the purpose of developing memory, to imprint these violent and constantly-repeated impacts from without upon the brain, because memory is necessary that the experiences of the past may be used as guides to Action.

The education of the girls developed the first germinal, flickering memory. The first idea of Good and Evil was formulated by them because of their experiences, which worked chiefly on the imagination. Those experiences most likely to leave a recollection were thought “Good;” those which did not produce that much-desired result were considered “Evil.”

Thus woman became the pioneer in culture, being the first to develop the idea of “a good life,” of which she became the esteemed exponent among the ancients and in that respect she has nobly led the vanguard ever since. Of course, as all Egos incarnate alternately as male and female, there is really no pre-eminence. It is simply that those who for the time being are in a dense body of the feminine gender have a positive vital body, and are therefore more responsive to spiritual impacts than when the vital body is negative as in the male.

As we have seen, the Lemurian was a born magician. He felt himself a descendant of the Gods, a spiritual being ; therefore his line of advancement was by gaining not spiritual, but material knowledge. The Temples of Initiation for the most advanced did not need to reveal to man his high origin ; to educate him to perform feats of magic ; to instruct him how to function in the desire world and the higher realms. Such instruction is necessary today because now the average man has no knowledge of the spiritual world, nor can he function in superphysical realms. The Lemurian, however, in his own way, did possess that knowledge and could exercise those faculties, but on the other hand, he was ignorant of the Laws of the Cosmos and of facts regarding the physical world which are matters of common, everyday knowledge with us. Therefore at the School of Initiation he was taught art, the laws of Nature and facts relating to the physical universe. His will was strengthened and his imagination and memory wakened so that he could correlate experiences and devise ways and means of action when his past experiences did not serve to indicate a proper course of procedure. Thus the Temples of Initiation in the Lemurian times were High Schools for the cultivation of Will-power and Imagination, with “post-graduate courses” in Art and Science.

Yet, though the Lemurian was a born magician, he never misused his powers because he felt himself related to the Gods. Under the direction of the Messengers of the Gods, already spoken of, his forces were directed toward the molding of forms in the animal and the plant worlds. It may be hard for the materialist to understand how he could do such work if he could not see the world about him. It is true man could not “see” as we understand the term and as he now sees objects outside in space with his physical eyes. Still, as the purest of our children are clairvoyant to this day while they remain in a state of sinless innocence, so the Lemurians, who were yet pure and innocent, possessed an internal perception which gave them only a dim idea of the outward shape of any object, but illumined so much the brighter its inner nature, its soul-quality, by a spiritual apperception born of innocent purity.

Innocence, however, is not synonymous with Virtue. Innocence is the child of Ignorance and could not be maintained in a universe where the purpose of evolution is the acquisition of Wisdom. To attain that end, a knowledge of good and evil, right and wrong, is essential, also choice of action.

If, having knowledge and choice, man ranges himself on the side of Good and Right he cultivates Virtue and Wisdom. If he succumbs to temptation and does wrong knowingly, he fosters vice.

God’s plan is not to be brought to naught, however. Every act is a seed-ground for the law of Consequence. We reap what we sow. The weeds of wrong action bear flowers of sorrow and suffering, and when the seeds from them have fallen into a chastened heart, when they have been watered by the tears of repentance Virtue will eventually blossom forth. What blessed assurance, that out of every evil we do, Good will eventually accrue, for in our Father’s Kingdom naught but Good can endure.

Therefore the “Fall” with its consequent pain and suffering is but a temporary state where we see through a glass darkly, but anon we shall behold again face to face the God within and without who is ever perceived by the pure in heart."

[a.a.O., S. 275 - 282]

1910

Es erscheint auf Telugu :

ఆంధ్రుల చరిత్రము - Āndhrula caritramu (History of the Andhras)

"In 1910. the editor of the Vignana Chandrika Mandali [విజ్ఞాన చంద్రికా మండలి], in the preface to Andhrula Charitramu [History of the Andhras], observed:

The Andhras had a glorious past. Without a knowledge of history and presuming that the Andhras were never glorious, some have been spreading a theory that the Andhras are the descendants of the Marathas, with the hope that this would increase Andhras' prestige. The present work will show that we [The Andhras] need not shine on borrowed plumes, that it might be that the Marathas are the descendants of Andhras and not otherwise and that, in days gone by, the Andhras were not behind any other people in India in the extent of their Kingdoms, their intellectual attainments or their civilization.

This work based on assiduous research proved very popular. It instilled in the Andhras a deep pride in their heritage, dispelled the widely prevalent "well-settled belief among the educated men that the Telugus had no past worth recollecting and roused them to demand the recognition of their distinctness."

[Quelle: K. V. Narayana Rao (1934 - ): The emergence of Andhra Pradesh. -- Bomby : Popular Prakashan, 1973. -- 350 S. -- S. 15. -- Online: The emergence of Andhra Pradesh : Narayana Rao, K. V., 1934- : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive. -- Fair use]

1911-05-14

Karunthattankudi (Tamil கருந்தட்டைகுடியில்): Gründung des Karanthai Tamil Sangam (Tamil கரந்தைத் தமிழ்ச் சங்கம்)

1911-12-02

Ramanathapuram (Tamil இராமநாதபுரம்): Tod von Pandithurai Thevar (Tamil பாண்டித்துரைத் தேவர் - Pāṇṭitturait Tēvar, 1867 - 1911)

Pandithurai Thevar
Born Ukkira Pandian


1867 03 21
 

Ramanathapuram
Died 1911 12 02 aged 44
 

Ramanathapuram

Nationality Indian
Occupation Zameendhar
Known for Philanthropy
Notable work Establishing Madurai 4th Tamil Sangam


 

"Among the many grievances of the devotional community was the absence of appreciative patrons who would extend their liberality and largesse to the support of Tamil and its followers. In 1897, as a young man barely fifteen, Subramania Bharati lamented to one such patron, the landlord of Ettayapuram:

In this world, surrounded by oceans and abounding with languages,
Is our glorious and auspicious Tamil, sweeter than nectar, to which the great lord Shiva himself offered his grace;
Yet there is no one around anymore to favor it;
Its learners languish away, while lesser tongues flourish.
 

(Bharati 1987: 2)

Tamil’s devotees were of course not alone in colonial India in lamenting over the deteriorating state of patronage extended to traditional arts and letters. The attrition and disappearance of royal courts and religious centers of learning, the redirection of funds towards “useful” and “modern” forms of knowledge, the rise of new bourgeois forms of consumption, and a colonial state indifferent to the promotion of India’s languages and literatures—all these contributed to the generalized feeling that things were no longer as they were in the past. The nostalgia for ancient Cankam poems that was so endemic in devotional circles was also very much a nostalgia for an age in which magnanimous kings were imagined to welcome with open arms the poor poet who wandered into their courts, lend an appreciative ear to his compositions, and shower him with food, clothing, and gold. Those were the days, its devotees sigh, when the wealthy and the notable were admirers of Tamil (and of its scholars). But today,

“we lavishly heap our wealth on jewelry, cards, drinks, tobacco, entertainment . . . but would not spend even one paisa out of a hundred rupees to protect [Tamilttay], What a shame!” (Lakshmana Pillai 1892.-93: 1-54).

Not surprisingly, when one such patron did put in an appearance at the turn of this century, and placed his considerable wealth and influence at the service of Tamil, he came to be narrated in devotional writings as a Cankam king reincarnate. The institution that he founded and funded in 1901, the Madurai Tamil Sangam, was itself characterized as the “Fourth” Tamil Cankam, thus establishing a genealogical connection with the three ancient academies that are believed to have flourished in the distant past under the patronage of successive generations of Pandyan kings. Its founder-patron, Pandithurai Theva, named at birth in 1876 Ugrapandyan [உக்கிரபாண்டியன்] (an ancient name that recalled the glory of the Pandyan kings of the Cankam age), was the landlord (zamindar) of Palavanatham, a small estate in Ramanathapuram district. In the reckoning of his biographers and admirers, Pandithurai—unlike many of his zamindari cohort, who frittered away their life and wealth in wasteful activities—was an enthusiastic Tamil scholar and poet himself. He may have inherited his love for Tamil from his father, Ponnusami Thevar [முகவை பொன்னுசாமித் தேவர்] (1837-70), who also had been its patron, “like the Pandyan kings of yore,” in the words of the famous Shaivite scholar Arumuga Navalar (M. Raghava Aiyangar 1948: 51). Indeed, distressed that so many great works of ancient Tamil had yet to find their way into print, Ponnusami, who was then the chief manager of the Ramanathapuram estate of his brother, Muthuramalinga Sethupati (1841-73), commissioned Arumuga Navalar to publish texts such as the Tirukkovaiyar [திருக்கோவையார்] and the Tirukkural, which he then distributed at his own expense to scholars. Ponnusami also established a much-needed printing press for the publication of Tamil books in Ramanathapuram town (M. Raghava Aiyangar 1948: 51-53).

Raised in an environment where such value was placed on Tamil learning, Pandithurai continued this tradition of extending patronage to Tamil and also prevailed upon his more influential cousin, Bhaskara Sethupati (1868-1903), the zamindar of Ramanathapuram, to do the same. Indeed, their “courts,” we are told, were like “heaven on earth.” Here, from morning till late into the night, one could hear learned disquisitions on the intricacies of Kamban’s Iramavataram or the Tirukkural; poets and musicians were frequent visitors, and “forgetting hunger and thirst,” they would sing their compositions and recite poetry. In addition to throwing his court open to visiting scholars, Pandithurai also financed the publication of many ancient manuscripts, including some of Swaminatha Aiyar’s (M. Raghava Aiyangar 1948: 76-95). Tamil enthusiasts narrate with pride an incident from Pandithurai’s life illustrating how his devotion to Tamil led him to ensure that the reading public had access to well-published and error-free editions of their ancient texts. An Anglo-Indian lawyer of Madurai had had the temerity to publish five hundred copies of the Tirukkural, “made easy.” Pandithurai invited him over to his palace and asked to see the publication. He noted with anger that the lawyer had erred in the very first key verse of the text. Learning that only two hundred copies of the publication had been sold so far, Pandithurai purchased the remaining three hundred and burned the whole lot, rather than expose his fellow Tamilians to such a travesty (M. Raghava Aiyangar 1948: 105-7).

The scarcity of good published versions of Tamil literary works was what spurred Pandithurai to found his well-known Sangam. In one version of the story, when he was visiting Madurai and needed copies of the Tirukkural and Kamban’s Iramavataram to prepare a lecture, he discovered that it was impossible to procure them. If these works, the heart of Tamil literature, were unavailable in Madurai, the center of Tamil learning, what fate awaited Tamil? he lamented. Resolving to do something to change this, in 1901 he summoned together various notables and scholars and spoke of the need to create a society dedicated to the improvement of Tamil (M. Raghava Aiyangar 1948: 87-89).

“The rejection of our mother tongue, Tamil, and the embracing of English mostly for the sake of greater comfort, is like the rejection of our mother in favor of our newly arrived wife,”

he declared in his speech urging his fellow speakers to come forward and help him in his new venture.

His idea was not new. Since the 1880s, a few such societies had sprung up in the Presidency, although most were short-lived. No doubt, the Madurai Tamil Sangam’s own longer and more fruitful existence was the result of a convergence of factors: the liberal funding it received from Pandithurai and Bhaskara Setupati (who also used their influence to get other notables to make contributions); the supplementing of the scholarly activities of the Sangam with the establishment of a printing press, a research center, a school that conducted exams and offered degrees in Tamil, and a library (which was started with liberal donations of books from Pandithurai’s and the Setupati’s own collections); and the founding of a journal, Centamiḻ  [செந்தமிழ் - klassisches Tamil], in late 1902. All of these attracted to the Sangam some of the finest minds in the world of Tamil learning. But not least of the reasons for the Sangam’s success was the symbolic capital that accrued from its location in Madurai; from its self-representation as continuing the traditions of the ancient academies of the Tamil land; and from the persona of its founder, Pandithurai, as a true descendant of the great vallals [வள்ளள்], “benefactors,” of yore (Rowther 1907)."

[Quelle: Sumathi Ramaswamy [சுமதி ராமஸ்வாமி]: Passions of tongue : Language devotion in Tamil India 1891 - 1970. -- Berkeley : Univ. of California Pr., 1997. -- S. 220ff. -- Fair use]

1912

Guntur (Telugu గుంటూరు): Beginn des Andhra movement (Telugu ఆంధ్రోద్యమం - Āndhrōdyamaṁ)

"Soon after the Nidadavole conference [1912-05], some young men of Guntur including Unnava Lakshminarayana, Challa Seshagiri Rao, J. Gurunatham and  Konda Venkatappayya discussed seriously the need for separating the Telugu districts from the Madras Presidency to form a separate province with a separate High Court, Revenue Board etc. and wanted to start an agitation for this purpose. Konda Venkatappayya was urged to undertake the task. Venkatappayya recollects his reactions thus:

To me their talk appeared emotional and ambitious. That great work seemed impossible but I could not tell them straight that I disagreed with them. I felt that I could not and should not discourage such enthusiasts.....So I told them.

‘This is a Herculean task......Some of our own leaders may dislike it. To be strong and successful the movement should have the co-operation of all. We should not frighten them by beginning to demand an Andhra province immediately. We should try to start an Andhra Maha Sabha, hold annual conferences to discuss ways and means to improve the physical, economic and moral conditions of Andhras, and to bring about the all round development, unity and awakening among the Andhras and for these purposes we should carry on propaganda.'

Some extremists among those present expressed different opinions but finally all decided that my suggestion was appropriate. Then, assisted by J. Gurunatham, I prepared a booklet on the movement in English and in Telugu.

The Andhra Movement published by Venkatappayya summed up the aims of the movement thus:

The Andhra movement is only an attempt to open their [i.e. the Telugu people’s] minds to their present backwardness and induce individual exertion as well as corporate action on their part to improve their condition. The chief work of the movement will thus be:

  1. Creating among the people great love for education, culture and high ideals and making provision for their special educational needs by representation to the Government and by other means;
  2. Studying the agricultural and commercial conditions of the country and concerting measures for their progress by creating a spirit of co-operation and by developing mutual trust and confidence;
  3. Stimulating interest in sanitation, health and physical culture and suggesting the means of promoting the physique of the present generation;
  4. Promoting the development of Telugu literature by encouraging the publication of books in the vernacular which arc intended to convey the principles of modem culture and enlightenment to the masses;
  5. Securing the advancement of the claims of the Telugus in public service.

Till then a handful of men here and there had been sporadically articulating the demand for a separate Andhra province and no purposeful organized effort in that direction was made. Now an agitation by a group of zealous, determined and public spirited young men at Guntur led by Konda Venkatappayya, a noble and selfless worker, was launched for inspiring a movement for the all-sided improvement of Andhras."

[Quelle: K. V. Narayana Rao (1934 - ): The emergence of Andhra Pradesh. -- Bomby : Popular Prakashan, 1973. -- 350 S. -- S. 35f. -- Online: The emergence of Andhra Pradesh : Narayana Rao, K. V., 1934- : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive. -- Fair use]

"Since the beginning of the Andhra movement, Telugu poets began singing the glorious past of the Andhras in different fields like literature, art. martial spirit and maritime commerce and regretted their latter-day backwardness. They were full of praise for Andhra Matha [ఆంధ్ర మాతా] — Mother Andhra and exhorted the Andhras to wake up and feel proud of (to retain the expression in the first person)

 “my race, my country, my language."

One of the songs composed at that time reads:

The soil of Andhra is gold to us
Her waters our nectar.
The Andhra air our life breath
Andhra Desa [Andhra Land] is verily our Deity."

[Quelle: K. V. Narayana Rao (1934 - ): The emergence of Andhra Pradesh. -- Bomby : Popular Prakashan, 1973. -- 350 S. -- S. 67. -- Online: The emergence of Andhra Pradesh : Narayana Rao, K. V., 1934- : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive. -- Fair use]

1912

Madras (Tamil மதராஸ்): Es erscheint

Satyananda Somasundara Bharathi (Tamil சோமசுந்தர பாரதியார் - Cōmacuntara pāratiyār, 1879 -1959): Tamil Classics and Tamilakam. -- [1912]. -- Wieder abgedruckt in: Siddhanta Deepika or The light of truth and Agamic review. -- Vol. XIV. -- 1913-07. -- S. 1 - 24. -- Online: Siddhanta Deepika Volume 14 : Editors: J.M.Nallasami Pillai, V.V. Raman : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

"Having briefly referred to the four current theories propounded by the Scholars of the West and the East about the Original home of the Tamilians being somewhere else than in India, and having pointed out how all of them have run more or less in one groove and turned on one fixed idea of a foreign home, I turn to what I propose to call the Indigenous theory and shall discuss it at some length. According to this theory, the Tamils were not Aliens, but are the “Indigene” whom no Aeneas of the Eastern Aryans could either vanquish or dislodge. The peopling of Tamilakam [தமிழகம்] with this chosen tribe transcends all history, all legends within the memory of man. The first Aryan stranger, who swam south across the trackless jungles, was dazzled with the splendour of the Royal Pandiyan Courts, and he was not too proud to seek shelter in the hospitable Tamil land that smiled to a sunny clime. History finds the Tamils in their present abode long before the Romans conquered Egypt or Christ was born in Bethlehem; before Porus met the Greek or Darius lost his crown; before Plato wrote his Dialogues and Solomon made his songs. In short the Tamil people believe (and tradition supports their belief) that from the start of their existence they lived and thrived in the land watered by the Palar on the north and the sea-swallowed Pahruli on the South.

[...]

The only conclusion borne in upon us a reading of the oldest of the old Tamil works is that the Tamils could not have come into southern India from elsewhere. They were here in all the time past, as far as the keenest historic vision or the shrewdest ingenuity of man could pierce through. They grew up on the sunny bosom of Tamilakam between the Mahanadi and the submerged Pahruli rivers, and, like the Swiss patriots, clung 'close and close to their mother’s breast,’ as the ‘loud torrent and the whirlwinds roar but bound them to their native mountains more.’ [Oliver Goldsmith (1851). “The Traveller”, p.7] Although occasionally their martial kings burst into the north, waged wars, levied tributes, and sometimes settled even colonies outside Tamilakam, they loved their home so well that the boldest and most ambitious Tamil warrior always returned from his expeditions to his country in the Tamilakam. However, their intense patriotism was not barren of enterprise. Their sea faring adventurous sons had founded tracing colonies in (1) Chavakam (Java) and in (2) Kadaram (Burma), and when they lost their southern “Lombardy” provinces by the inundation, their country reduced itself to its present limits.

That not only the Tamil country extended itself further south, but that there was a large southern continent inhabited by non-Tamil nations, receives countenance from the Tamil tradition, which is entombed in Ilampuranam [இளம்பூரணர்], and confirmed by evidences of Geologists. Prof. Haeckel assures us that the Indian ocean formed a continent, which extended from the Sunda islands, along the coast of Asia, to the east coast of Africa, and which is of great importance as having been the probable cradle of the human race. Another scientist writes that “ the locality of the origin of the earliest race from recent researches appears to have been on lands now submerged beneath the Indian Ocean.” Sir Walter Raleigh’s History of the World strongly supports this hypothesis regarding the first nursery of man, and affirms that “India was the first planted and peopled country after the flood”.

Some writer have mistaken these geological facts pointing to a lost Southern continent, and argued that this submerged continent was something unconnected with the present Tamil country. They have theorised therefrom that the ancestors of the Tamils should have come into their present settlements, from some far-off Pacific home. The best answer for them is that they are unable to adduce any proofs either geological or traditional, in support of their fond conjectures. On the contrary, there are unmistakable indications in the Tamil traditions that the land affected by the deluge was contiguous with the Tamilakam, and that, after the subsidence, the Tamils naturally betook themselves to their northern provinces. But of the other non-Tamil races that inhabited the regions further south of the lost Tamil provinces, it would stand to reason to expect the survivors naturally to have dispersed in different directions in order to find newer homes either in Europe, Asia or America. Of course there may have been islands formed, and remnants of old nations stranded thereon even in the Pacific regions. But it is nothing unlikely that some brave and enterprising branches voyaged long and far into newer seas and founded colonies in stranger lands. May be some gallant sailors founded settlements on the coasts washed by the waves of the Mediterranean and Arabian seas, even prior to the deluge: and maybe the flotilla of the survivors, after the floods, drifted in quest of their brethren there. Whatever was the genesis of the Phoenician and Ionian settlements, if the submerged 'Lemuria' had sent there even a single shipwrecked sailor after the great subsidence, he should have carried in the same boat the history of the deluge. And imagination and time could not have long left such a fruitful theme unutilised in their new domicile. This story of the Deluge prevalent among the Semitic and the Ionian tribes should be viewed rather as corroborative evidence in confirmation of the traditional Tamil home than as an argument to give the Tamils a Chaldean home.

From what has been stated and cited, it will be abundantly clear that, apart front the master passion of the Western scholars that gave the Tamils too a foreign home, there is nothing in the Tamil classics of undoubted antiquity that will countenance such a fall, and that progressive geological research is ready and willing to shake hands with the primeval poems of the Tamil country and establish that the ancestral home of the Tamils was in the far south of the Indian continent now under the sea and not above the snow-clad Himalayan heights, or in the land of the celestials, or in the country of the Hebrews before their dispersion. In short, the original abode of the Tamils was none other than the time-honoured Tamilakam in South India, part of which, with all its gems and gem-like treasures, the Indian Ocean has bidden in her vast bosom and which she is not willing to part with or reveal though centuries upon centuries have rolled silently away."

[a.a.O., S. 6 ; 22 - 24. -- Fair use]

1913 - 1917

Zum Andhra Movement (Telugu ఆంధ్రోద్యమం - Āndhrōdyamaṁ):

"PRINCIPLES AND SCHEME OF LINGUISTIC PROVINCES

A number of prominent Andhras, at some time or other, particularly during the period 1913 to 1917 spoke and wrote about the necessity of an Andhra Province. The principles and the scheme of linguistic provinces may best be expressed in their own words:

A Sub-national Movement

Some argue that the word ‘race’ implies blood relationship, [and that] the Andhras do not constitute a separate race ... The word 'race' is now applied not only to people related by blood relationship, but even to those bound together by common language, common history or common government. In the dictionary the word 'Jati' [జాతి] is defined as a class of animals or human beings having common characteristics . . The differences between the two peoples [Andhras and Tamils] is a real one ... The Andhra movement [is] really a sub-national movement aiming at the development of the Andhra people, and deserving the sympathy and co-operation of the people in the other parts of India and also of the Government.

Importance of Common Language

Common language is the best tic which binds man to man and mind to mind. Common language means further common tradition, common customs, morals and religion, as a rule common aspirations and ideals and common means of advancement by the help of a common literature considerations like these lead logically to the conclusion that the language area is the most natural educational unit and with it the right territorial unit for almost everything also.

India has had a central government for ages, but its past history as well as the history of the peoples in the world in general docs not encourage one to entertain (the) hope [of inducing the people of India to adopt one language even in the very remote future]. The idea of introducing Hindi as the universal language in India is chimerical in the extreme and even if it were possible it cannot of itself wipe away the distinctions and fuse all the races into one homogenous Indian nationality and such a consummation is not even desirable. Better remain as we are than attain the Indian Nationality, by such a heavy sacrifice of our mother-tongue and the beautiful Andhra literature which is the treasure of hoary ages, and by the adoption of a language with a second rate literature in place of the Italian of the East (i.e. Telugu].

The Goal -- A Federation

India is a continent by itself. Each race in India is a unit in the Indian Nationality. The efficiency of units conduces to the efficiency of the whole. A weak Andhra race means a weak Indian Nationality. Unless the parts of a whole are fully developed the whole cannot have a harmonious growth. The comparative growth of one part at the expense of the other leads to the deterioration and brings about disease in the organism. Likewise the free and full growth of Indian races on their own lines contributes to the solid growth of the Indian Nationality as a whole . [The future of the Indian Nation] will be a federated Indian Nationality, where each race having to play its own part without detriment to the Indian Nation and having developed equally successfully, co-operates with the other for the good of India The United States of future India under the aegis of Great Britain will have to work on the same lines as the United States of America, and must have the American nation as an example to imitate consisting as it docs of heterogenous races like India. The division of India into small self-contained administrative units will promote the efficiency of a united Indian Nationality instead of marring the unity of Indian nation as some anticipate?

Andhras First and Indians Next

[Another charge is that] we consider ourselves Andhras first and Indians next. In the evolution of political thought that sentiment is absolutely necessary for federal constitutions. Federation would be meaningless without that sentiment. While an Indian's patriotism for the whole country is general his patriotism for his little province must not be lost sight of but shown wherever there is need for it.

There remains the larger question whether such isolation [arising out of linguistic reorganisation of provinces] of an administrative character will not be a bar to the future upbuilding of the Indian nationality. We may just note that demarcation into separate provinces has not in the past alienated Madras from Bombay and Bengal from U.P. [United Provinces of Agra and Oudh]. The future Andhra will no more be inimical to the future Dravidian than the Englishman is to the Scot or the Welshman. Why is it that Scotland and Wales are seeking in common with Ireland separate parliaments and recommending the same to England? That is the trend of the modern progress which aims not at fusion but at federation which does not seek to establish unity only among factors wholly similar, but strives to discover a general harmony amongst communities, presenting a variety of structure and development and it would be the greatest superstition to delimit to the existing ten the division that will constitute the future autonomies [sic] of a federated India?

Meaning of a Linguistic Province

The Government through an alien language has given a general air of alienness to the administration itself, so that every usage or institution of that administration, however harmless or beneficent in itself to the people, was so to speak morally rejected under instinctive apprehension of its unsuitedness to the Indian life or where persistently enforced, was silently submitted to as part of the inevitable indemnity of conquest. If this explanation be right, the one and only remedy must be in the complete adoption of the vernacular as the language of the administration in the land, in the necessary modification of the personnel of Government at least to the limit of the District administration in accordance therewith ... But allowing for the inevitable supremacy of both [English] language and personnel in the highest sphere of executive government, the fountain sources of legislation and administration must be laid entirely in the realm of the vernacular, rendering possible the fresh and fullest discussion of all vital problems of public interest, and their publication as deep and wide as would be necessary to reach the millions toiling in the Indian villages. Such dominance of the vernacular in the mutual relation of the Government and the people is bound to make the task of administration infinitely easier and more satisfactory. It will raise the efficiency of administration     Similarly the complete adoption of the vernacular in civil and criminal courts would not only ensure natural and substantial justice, effecting incalculable saving in time and money but would ultimately help in simplifying law and procedure in harmony with the social instincts of an essentially agricultural people The next important corollary to reorganisation of provinces on a linguistic basis is the free and universal acceptance of the vernacular as the sole medium of instruction in all the educational institutions of the land/

Too Many Provinces?

It may be feared that such a scheme [of linguistic reorganization] would necessitate too many provinces but in this vast country where nearly hundred and forty-seven languages are spoken, those with a distinctive literature and culture of their own are not more than 15 or 16. Accordingly in our ideal scheme of “one province, one language”, we may not have to provide for more than 15 or 16 provinces. The day may indeed come when the growth of population, the needs of administration, the aspirations of the people marked by local variations in manner and temperament, and political expediency may demand a further increase in the number of provinces, so that we cannot lay down the proposition of 'one language, one province’ and just as the Hindi speaking people being even now too numerous for one province have absorbed two provinces for themselves, other language areas may at a remote future comprise more than one province."

[Quelle: K. V. Narayana Rao (1934 - ): The emergence of Andhra Pradesh. -- Bomby : Popular Prakashan, 1973. -- 350 S. -- S. 321ff. -- Online: The emergence of Andhra Pradesh : Narayana Rao, K. V., 1934- : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive. -- Fair use]

1913 ff.

Zum Disput zwischen Telugus und Tamilen über Madras (Tamil மதராஸ் ; Telugu మద్రాస్)

"THE DISPUTE ABOUT THE CITY OF MADRAS

The claims of the Andhras to the city may be briefly summarised as follows:

It was a Telugu King who owned the soil on which the Fort Fort St. George and the city sprang up The areas surrounding Fort St. George belonged to the Telugu kings. The king, in his grant, wanted that the city be esteemed for all times as a Telugu city. The Telugus were there already. The city was known as a Telugu city to foreign travellers for a very long time. The prominent native officials likeConicoply or Karnam, Adigari, Peddinague, Dubashes and the chief merchants connected with the East India Company in Madras at that time were Telugus. The orders notifications, proclamations, etc. issued from Fort St. George were in the Telugu language.

These claims of the Andhras are largely true so far as the Chennapatnam [చెన్నపట్నం] of the 17th century was concerned; but it is necessary to bear in mind that the boundaries of Madras expanded since then. The official centre of the settlement founded in 1639 was designated as Fort St. George. The British applied the name Madraspatam— which gradually became Madras to the combined Towns of Chennapatam and Madraspatam. The original site of the village of Madraspatam is probably to be found on the northern esplanade of modern Fort. St. George. Outside the bounds of Madraspatam was a group of villages comprising Tandore on the north, Perambore to the north-west, Vepery and Purasawalkam on the west, Egmore and Nungambaukum to the south-west and the Triplicane on the south. These villages, with others, are now included in the urban area, but they were acquired by the British only later. Chintadripet was not founded until the eighteenth century. With the addition of these and other areas, the growing city also came to be called Madras.


Abb.: Madras, Baedeker, 1914
[Public domain]

The Tamil Case

The Tamil claims to the city were based on solid grounds. The Tamils constitute the majority of the population in the city which is also surround ed by Tamil areas.

The first Census of Madras, for which details of the population speaking each language are available, was in the year 1881. It showed that in a total population of 405.848, the Tamils numbered 239.108, the Telugus 94.330, the Hindusthanis 46,410, the Canarese 1.186, the Malayalees 232 and the Marathis 4,238.


Abb.: Bevölkerung von Madras, 1881

In the next Census (1891) people born in the City of Madras and enumerated there accounted for 72 percent of the Madras population. Of the remaining, 11.72 per cent were born in the Chingleput District, and 16.28 per cent in other districts. The population of those born in South Arcot and Tanjore districts and enumerated in Madras City had risen considerably. Adverse seasonal conditions like famine, the early spread of railways in the Tamil districts and the consequent constant flow of Tamils in the City might have accounted for 58 per cent of their population in 1891 and subsequent increase in the Tamil population only increased their percentage. Thus by 1931 they constituted 63.63 per cent of the total population and the inclusion of about 20 square miles of Saidapet, including Saidapet Municipality in 1940's within the Corporation area, increased the Tamil population to 67.92 per cent in 1951.

Census Suspected

Prakasam and others suspected some mischief by enumerators who were mostly Tamils and so questioned the validity of the Census statements which showed Tamils to be a majority in the City. Allegations of boosting the population figures of a particular community or a linguistic group in various ways and questioning the veracity of Census seem to be a recurring phenomenon; but we have no other statistics to go by than the Census. Further, it is difficult to believe that mischief had been deliberately played from the l880's to the end of the first decade of the present century when the demand for an Andhra Province was nowhere in the picture.

Old Claims

In the early years of the Andhra Movement, the considered view of almost all its protagonists was that Madras, not being a Telugu city, had no place in the future Andhra Province. The Andhra Province maps published at that time excluded Madras. The articles in the press argued that the Andhra backwardness was due, among other things, to the situation of the capital in a far-off corner dominated by Tamils. The remedy, the Andhras felt, lay in having a separate Province with the capital in its midst. The Reorganisation of Indian Provinces, prepared and submitted by the Standing Committee of the AMS [Andhra Mahasabha] to the Indian National Congress in 1916, explicitly included the city in the Dravida [Tamil] Province. But the Andhra leaders were not oblivious of the existence of a large Telugu population in the Madras City. Konda Venkatappayya in his speech at the Bapatla Conference (1913) said that, if one went through the past history of Madras and the importance of the Andhra merchants in it, it was clear that the Andhras, like others, had claims over the city. The first suggestion that Madras could be the Andhra capital and some other place the Capital for the residuary Madras Province was made at the Nellore Conference (1917) by O. V. Rangayya Pantulu, the Chairman of the Reception Committee. The amendments to include Madras City in the Andhra Province were lost at the Conference, but made the leaders of the movement realise the necessity of including it to have the co operation of the Ceded Districts. Persistent demands for the inclusion of the city in the  Andhra Province began from 1918. The APCC [Andhra Pradesh Congress Committee] formed in 1918 included it in its jurisdiction. The AMS Conferences since 1918, in their resolutions, demanded an Andhra Province for the 12 districts including Madras.

After the Congress was reorganised on the linguistic basis in 1920, the question of jurisdiction over the city of Madras cropped up. G. Sitarama Sastri (later Swami Sitaram), then General Secretary of the APCC, was the first to suggest that Madras be made a separate City Province like Bombay. The Congress heard both the claims of the Tamils and Telugus and allowed both the APCC and the TNCC [Tamil Nadu Congress Committee] to enlist members from any and every ward of the city. A resolution seeking a separate Congress circle for the city was lost in the Subjects Committee of the Cocanada Congress in 1923. Next year, the AMS held its session for the first time in Madras when G. Rangiah Naidu, the Chairman of the Reception Committee, and himself a native of Madras, claimed that Madras was an Andhra city. In 1925, a proposal to include the City of Madras under the jurisdiction of the proposed Andhra University was rejected by the Select Committee on the Andhra University Bills after a heated debate. The provision to affiliate a second grade college in Madras to the Andhra University, opposed only by Dr. P. Subbaroyan and T. M. Narasimhacharlu out of a total of 33 members  was dropped only at the final stage. In 1926 Sir Sankaran Nair, a Malayalee, stated that Madras was half-Telugu and half Tamil. Ramadas Pantulu’s resolution in the Council of State included northern portion of Madras as part of Andhra Province. The surplus funds of about Rs. 20,000/- of the Madras Congress Session (December 1927) were divided equally between the APCC and the TNCC, both of which had jurisdiction over the city. Andhras were in the forefront in the Congress agitations in the city particularly during the boycott of the Simon Commission and Salt Satyagraha.

The Andhras entertained hopes in the 193O’s that a province would soon be formed. So the discussion on the future capital began. Earlier, the Raja of Panagal held the view that Madras should be retained as the Andhra Capital. The desire to satisfy the public opinion in Rayalaseema was evident when Ramadas Panlulu wanted that Madras should be the Andhra Capital for the time being, or at all events, until such time as another city was selected with the practically unanimous consent of all the Andhra districts if such a change was felt necessary and desirable in the light of the developments that would follow in the wake of the new province. The sufficiently strong opinion in and outside the Andhra districts in favour of making Madras, the capital of Andhra Province, was indicated when an amendment aimed at making Madras the capital of Andhra Province was lost by only one vote in the Madras Legislative Council in I933. The voting was 19 for, 20 against and 22 neutral. Of the elected members, 15 were for, 12 against and 6 neutral.

This was not obviously to the liking of some of the TNCC leaders. They directed their efforts first to have exclusive jurisdiction over the city. C.R.  [C. Rajagopalachari] retired from public life in 1935. Satyamurthi became the President of the TNCC and tried his best to see that Madras City was excluded from the jurisdiction of the APCC. The APCC, represented by Sambamurthy, would at best agree for the constitution of the cosmopolitan Madras City into a separate Congress circle reserving to itself the right of claiming Madras as a part of the Andhra Province when it was constituted. The Congress Working Committee favoured a separate Congress circle for the city but wanted an amicable settlement between the APCC and the TNCC.

Satyamurthi's unwillingness for such a proposal resulted in the continuance of the status quo. There was consultation and cooperation between the APCC and TNCC in the matter of selecting candidates from the city in all the elections to the legislature and the Corporation contested by the Congress from 1920 to 1946. Prakasam and some other Telugus won the 1937 and 1946 elections from the city constituencies.

The 1936 session of the AMS resolved that when an Andhra Province was constituted Madras should be the capita) of the Andhra Province also. But the Sri Bagh Pact which was concluded between the Rayalaseema leaders and the Circars leaders in November 1937, made no reference to the city. One obvious reason was that Pattabhi, one of the active participants in the talks, had felt that an emphasis on the inclusion of Madras City might only delay the formation of an Andhra Province. Probably the signatories to the pact from Rayalaseema Districts also felt like wise. The Andhra University headquarters location affair (1926-1929) possibly made them apprehend that the Capital and the High Court too would be located somewhere in the far-off coastal districts. They did not want to be losers in the event of the formation of an Andhra Province without Madras City. Hence the stipulation regarding the Capital and the High Court in the Sri Bagh Pact.

Prakasam, Koti Reddy, Sambamurthy and some others believed in the necessity and possibility of including the city in the Andhra Province . It is difficult to say whether their demand stemmed from their interest in satisfying the Rayalaseema or in the advantages and facilities available in the city or both. Their view succeeded when the AMS session at Madras in 1938 resolved that Madras should be the capital of the Andhra Province. The TNCC immediately wanted the city of Madras and the territory extending as far as the Tirupathi Hills to be part of the Tamil province exclusively. A few months later, the Madras Cabinet acquiesced in Lord Erskine’s suggestion that Madras could be the capital for both the provinces with the same Governor presiding over both the Cabinets. Later, it was said, Lord Erskine changed his mind and wrote to the Secretary of State for India against the formation of Andhra Province. Satyamurthi became the Mayor of Madras Corporation in 1939 and again made some unsuccessful attempts to exclude APCC from jurisdiction over Madras city. In 1945 Sir Norman Strathie, Adviser to the Madras Governor, opined that Madras could be a separate Province like Delhi, and Vijayawada and Trichinopoly the capitals of Andhra and Tamilnadu, respectively. The suggestion was welcomed by the Andhra Leaders. While it may be seen that the different Andhra leaders held different opinions regarding the inclusion of Madras City in the Andhra Province, the Tamil leaders, without a single exception, were for the inclusion of Madras in Tamilnadu.

Madras, a Separate Province

The advent of independence, and the consequent possibility of the creation of an Andhra Province in the near future only intensified the claims and counter claims of Telugus and Tamils over the city.

During the visit of the Dar Commission, the Madras Government, in its reply to the questionnaire issued by the Commission, expressed itself firmly against making Madras a separate Province or a sub-province. But Dr Krishna Pillai, on behalf of the Kerala Samaj, representing about two lakhs Malayalees of the city, waited on the Commission demanding that the city be made a Chief Commissioner’s State. Similar was the opinion of the Hindusthan Chamber of Commerce whose representatives, S. M Patel, C. M. Kothari, B. K. Vora, Keshavlal K. Shah, J. P Sanghrajka, Inder Sain and others, waited on the Commission. They suggested the formation of Madras City into a Chief Commissioner’s State if the province was divided on linguistic basis. The Gujarati Mandal supported the view.

On the basis of the evidence tendered and memoranda submitted by people of all shades of opinion, the Dar Commission, which was against the formation of linguistic Provinces suggested the exclusion of Bombay and Madras cities from any unilingual province, in the event of creation of linguistic provinces. The TNCC Executive was highly critical of that recommendation . In September 1948, the Tamilnad Boundary Committee (sponsored mainly by the TNCC) decided to contest the ensuing corporation elections, which, it considered, would be “really a plebiscite" on the question whether Madras city was Tamil or Andhra. Only 25 out of its 55 candidates were successful.

Importance of the City

Madras developed owing to the efforts of all the linguistic groups in the city, particularly the Tamils and the Telugus, the largest groups. Since the founding of the Fort St. George, it was the headquarters of the Presidency and so a number of government buildings were located in the city. It was a centre of business, had the port, aerodrome and other facilities, It was the educational centre of the Presidency. The post-graduate and professional colleges were almost concentrated there. Giving up the city would mean giving up these educational advantages. The Telugus had already been complaining since the 1940's that the Madras Government had been gradually decreasing educational facilities to the Telugu children in the city schools. They were apprehensive that once the city became the headquarters of a Tamil Province, even the then existing facilities might be diminished.

The inclusion of the city was demanded on financial grounds too. Excluding the city, the Telugu districts had, on the basis of 1948-49 accounts, a deficit of Rs. 201.01 lakhs , and the non-Telugu districts a deficit of Rs. 179.44 lakhs. The Madras city had a surplus of Rs. 208.96 lakhs. Consequent on the separation of the Telugu districts, the non-Telugu districts including Madras city were estimated to have a deficit of Rs. 56.48 lakhs.

Various Suggestions

In view of these claims and counter-claims over the city, various suggestions were made, mostly by the Andhras, as to the status of the city in the event of the formation of linguistic provinces. The suggestions were

  1. to make it the common capital for both the Andhra and Tamil Provinces,

  2. to make the city itself or with the inclusion of some surrounding areas into a separate Province, and

  3. to divide the city into North Madras and South Madras with Cooum as the boundary and making North Madras and South Madras, the Capitals of Andhra and Tamil Provinces, respectively.

Arbitration

At a very late stage there was more or less unanimous opinion among the Andhras that the city be made a Part C State. They repeatedly pleaded for arbitration of disputed issues including the status of Madras city. The Tamils did not even consider these suggestions. With one voice all of them demanded the inclusion of the city in the Tamil Province. Possibly it was the hope of the Andhras and the apprehension of the Tamils that once the issue was left for arbitration, any arbitrator, considering the claims of both and the advantages of which one of them would be deprived, if the city were to be included in the other, would come to the conclusion, (as the Dar Commission did), that it would be better to make it a Part C State, i.e., a State administered by the Central Government. One curious fact was almost all, who vociferously demanded the inclusion of the city in cither province, did not belong to the city by birth or parentage. Such examples are Prakasam, Swami Sitaram, Sambamurthi, C.R . Satyamurthi, C. Subramanyam and Kamaraj Nadar.

Yet it is doubtful that the creation of Madras as a Part C State would have solved the problem. Creation of Andhra and Tamil Provinces would have naturally increased the demand for other linguistic provinces in post-independent India. Madras was not the only city having significantly large groups of people speaking different languages. Bangalore, Trivandrum, Hyderabad, Bombay, and Calcutta are some of the cities in this category. If the principle of linguistic provinces and the creation of disputed cities into Part C States are both accepted it may be demanded that all these cities be made Part C States and the question of finding new capitals for Andhra, Tamilnad, Kerala, Karnataka, Maharashtra, to give only a few examples, would arise. May be, the new States might have to depend upon their own resources or seek central grants to have new capitals. The Government of India would not allow all these new problems to crop up simply because it could not take a firm decision to allow Bombay and Madras Cities to be included in unilingual provinces. So the status quo continued."

[Quelle: K. V. Narayana Rao (1934 - ): The emergence of Andhra Pradesh. -- Bombay : Popular Prakashan, 1973. -- 350 S. -- S. 225 - 230. -- Online: The emergence of Andhra Pradesh : Narayana Rao, K. V., 1934- : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive. -- Fair use]

1913

Madras (Tamil மதராஸ் ; Telugu మద్రాస్): Es erscheint:

Gidugu Venkata Ramamurthy (Telugu గిడుగు వెంకట రామమూర్తి - Giḍugu Veṅkaṭa Rāmamūrti, 1863 - 1940): A memorandum on modern Telugu. -- Madras : Guardian, 1913. -- 61 S.

"Prologue to a memorandum on modern Telugu

This memorandum was written in June 1912 shortly after the meeting of the Conference of the Telugu Pandits held at Madras under the auspices of the Telugu Academy recently formed there. My object in writing it was

  1. to vindicate the dignity of Modern Telugu, the genuine mother-tongue of the educated classes and its right to be used as the best medium of instruction and literary expression; and

  2. to refute the arguments advanced by the Pandits and the Academy against the “Modern Telugu Movement".

A committee of some of the leading members of the Academy was deputed to wait upon the Governor of Madras and present to His Excellency a copy of the Resolutions of the Pandits’ Conference. I was of the apprehension that if the narrow views of the pedants supported by the misguided zeal of the Academy were to prevail, irreparable harm would be done to the Telugu community. The Pandits rejected the views of the Modern Teachers submitted to them for consideration. I, therefore, thought it my duty to place these modern views before the authorities and prepared the Memorandum with two Appendixes—A. in which were briefly explained some of the important points of difference between Modern Standard Telugu and old Literary Telugu; and B, in which were criticised the Resolutions of the Conference relating to Erotics.

At the interview with His Excellency, the members of the Deputation are reported to have considerably modified the views of the Pandits, which are evidently so absurd that no one who is not obsessed with the Pandit’s pedantry or the counter-Reformation zeal of the Academy could take serious notice of them. Thanks to the policy of the government, no harm came of the misguided agitation of the conservatives and the reactionaries. The government wisely refused to muzzle the mouths of the modern teachers at the bidding of the Academy: they would remain neutral.

Frustrated in its first attempt to inveigle the government with the ipse dixit of the orthodox Pandit in support of its crusade against the modern ideas and eager to achieve something to justify its existence, it now plays the role of a champion of “Refined Telugu” and seeks to overawe the government by a grand demonstration of “Public opposition” to the “Modern Telugu Movement”. It is moving heaven and earth; it has set up gigantic machinery; its agents are working energetically to obtain signatures of as many persons as possible in support of the memorial. It is hopeful that this time the modern idea will be knocked on the head. Vain hope! The “modern" idea will live with “modern" Telugu, but the Academy is a lifeless machine with no motive power hut a false conception and false patriotism. It makes believe that the artificial language which some of its members have manufactured by modernising some old phrases and antiquating some modern forms could be galvanised into living speech if only schoolchildren were taught to speak and write in it. I would rather that it set an example to others: charity begins at home. A correspondent for Krishna Patrika has pointed out more than eighty violations of grammar in the Telugu translation of the very memorial which the Academy is going to submit to the government in order that the authority of the old grammar may be upheld and enforced. The Academy's own grammatical recipe fails in the case of the academicians themselves, whose ungrammaticality is congenital and who live amidst surroundings and in an atmosphere hopelessly ungrammatical. Let these academicians heal themselves before they undertake to prescribe for the whole world. The modern teacher most respectfully begs leave to challenge the Academy to prove what it professes and to vindicate its name by passing an arret laying down:

That it is the sine qua non of a Member of the Telugu Academy that he shall be able to speak readily the language which the Academy has decreed for use in the whole Telugu community. That every M.T.A. [Member of the Telugu Academy] whose mother—tongue is Telugu shall take the pledge that he will use in all the concerns of life, public and private, this language and not the mother-tongue which the Academy has condemned as a vulgar and ungrammatical jargon. That, if the M.T.A.s already enrolled, everyone who fails to qualify himself for membership in the manner aforesaid within twelve months from the date of the arret shall ipso facto ceases to be M.T.A. That hereafter... qualified Telugu scholars shall be admitted into the Academy.

But the Academy dare not do it. Why? What did the rats do when they were asked to carry out the resolution to bell the cat which they proposed so confidently? Not a tail of them was seen!

The sympathy of Rao Bahadur K. Veeresalingam Pantulu Garu with the present agitation of the Academy has now given it some undue importance. The veteran reformer is honoured by the modern teachers no less than by the Academy as one who has done great service to the Telugu community by his attacks on the orthodox Pandits’ corrupt literary ideals and unintelligible literary Telugu and by his advocacy of the diffusion of useful knowledge and modern ideas among the people. His efforts have certainly been attended with a fair measure of success. It is partly due to him that there are more persons now than fifty years ago who can understand the school-book-Telugu, which he has done so much to refine. But most of those who admire his achievements ignore the limitations of this schoolbook dialect. It is certainly more intelligible than the Pandits’ Telugu (the language of Vasucharitra or the Vigraham of Mahamahopadhyaya  K. Venkataratnam Pantulu Garu), but it is nonetheless an artificial language, different structure from the living speech; and, for that very reason, it is impossible for the average Telugu man, even though he belongs to an educated family, to speak or write it as freely as he does his mother tongue. The book-Telugu refined as it is by Viresalingam Pantulu Garu and others is, at the best, like Esperanto with all its defects and none of its merits. It is to be hoped that whatever his [recent] attitude may be to ‘modern ideas’, the Reformer who [fought out] successfully against the tyranny and bigotry of the Pandit will not support the tyranny and bigotry of the Academy. He wisely kept himself aloof while the Academy was hurrahing the Pandits who glorified their foul Erotic literature and the merits of the extinct symbols of the half nasals and the whirring burrs. The Modern teacher is now under the influence of ideas which are in a way different from those which influenced our revered reformer forty years ago. The ideas relating to the evolution of language, the function of grammar, the teaching of mother tongue, popular education, national literature, etc., have now changed a good deal. It would be most lamentable if the old Reformer condemned progress beyond the stage to which he himself has led it. Did Luther go back to Rome when he saw other protestants holding views more liberal than his own.

Is the “Modern Telugu Movement" any way inimical to progress? Educators! Well-wishers of the Telugu! Just think of this! There are 925 out of every 1,000 Telugus who do not know how to write their own name; or read what is printed on a railway ticket! Sixty per cent of the Brahmans themselves are still as illiterate as the Pariahs! The Brahman Pandit himself cannot at all speak classical literary Telugu; he can hardly write it correctly or with facility. Neither he nor anyone else ever uses it in the practical concern of life. But the language which he uses in his daily life is not only perfectly intelligible to others but is actually spoken by a good many people of the other castes; it is certainly almost as fashionable a living dialect of standard English and is now evidently spreading more and more widely, day by day, as communication increases. Do you believe to succeed in educating the illiterate millions through the medium of the lifeless, old. literary Telugu which the Academy advocates or the living, modern, polite dialect of the educated classes for which the modern teacher is fighting? Will you join the Academy in its prayer that government should “discountenance” the “modern Telugu movement”? Do you not know that there is hardly one per cent among the teachers now employed in the elementary or secondary school or the colleges who can teach literary Telugu of the Pandit? Inspectors or Telugu? How many of the supervisors, sub-assistant inspectors, assistant inspectors or inspectors of school know the Pandit’s Telugu? How could this Telugu be taught at schools when there is no teacher who can speak it? What is it that counts most in education: knowledge of things, or merely old meaningless sounds? The modern teacher has something to say on this subject in which you profess to be most interested in the [education] of the Telugu community. He does not want to force his views on others; he does not ask the government to proscribe the study of old Telugu; but he claims freedom to teach modern Telugu according to the best methods known to him; and he claims the right to preach what he thinks best. He believes that education through the medium of the modern language will bridge the wide gulf which separates classes and masses. To deny him what he is justified in claiming does not conduce to the progress of education. He is misrepresented by his opponents, who say that he advocates the vulgar tongue of the uneducated classes and that he aims at the destruction of the classical Telugu literature. Do not believe a word of it. On the other hand, he condemns “Vulgarity" more vehemently than the Pandits or the Academy and has a more genuine regard for the ancient literature, the cultivation of which he heartily commends to those who have the aptitude for it. What he urges is indeed a new idea, but he has faith in it. To train the “seeing eye" as Thring put it. the mother tongue is to be cultivated the genuine living language, not the artificial “cant” of school books, which, however refined, or however familiar to old-fashioned writers and teachers, does not lend itself to be treated as a natural medium of "self-expression" to children. Is it not unreasonable to condemn and forbid an experiment to prove this idea? If it has any merit in it will live. The fittest will survive. Let it have a chance to prove its merits. True progress is through the conflict between the old and new ideas. The modern teacher demands fair play, no favour.

The writer will be much obliged to those who favour him with their opinions on the views embodied in his Memorandum.

Parlakimedi

January 1913

G.V. Ramamurti"

[Quelle: Critical discourse in Telugu / ed by K. Suneetha Rani. -- Critical Discourse in Telugu - Google Play Books]

1913-05-20

Bapatla (Telugu బాపట్ల): Konferenz der Andhra Maha Sabha (AMS - Telugu ఆంధ్ర మహాసభ - Āndhra mahāsabha)

"The Andhra Conference, which came to be known as Andhra Mahajana Sabha or Andhra Maha Sabha (hereafter referred to as AMS) met in Bapatla on 20 May 1913. About 2000 visitors and 800 delegates from the Telugu districts of the Presidency attended the conference. Some delegates from Nagpur, Warangal and Hyderabad were also present. The venue of the conference had 22 gates each of which displayed in clear golden letters the names of poets, heroes and heroines prominent in the Andhra history or letters. All present — the Hindus, the Muslims and the Christians -- joined in the prayers with which the conference began and sang Vande Mataram. The proceedings were in Telugu.

The President. Mr. (later Sir) B. N. Sarma, then a member of the Legislative Council of Madras, exhorted the audience that:

the activities of the Andhras or Telugu-speaking people wherever they may be, in whatever climate they may reside, should be directed towards promoting:

  1. reverence to the throne,

  2. harmony, union, peace and goodwill among themselves so as to enable them to act as one man for the common weal,

  3. creation of an esprit de corps amongst them, a spirit of brotherhood, a nationality based on common tradition. interests and aspirations, and towards uplifting themselves in the scale of nations by their education, character and wealth.

He appealed to the audience to work for the uplift of the country and to remember that they were Indians first and the sons of “Mother Andhra" only next.

The resolution on the Andhra province, being the most important, provoked much discussion al the conference. The President, in his address, had stated that the Andhra Conference as such would discuss no resolution on the Andhra province, except by leave of all concerned and that there should be a fair consensus of opinion after the consideration of the question by the district conferences. Even so he felt that the subject should be considered beyond the scope of its activities. The Subjects Committee accepted the principle of the resolution unanimously, but was almost equally divided on whether it should be discussed at that conference. At the open session V. Ramadas Pantulu, from Madras, proposing the resolution on Andhra province, remarked that the Andhra movement would be lifeless without an ideal and a separate government for Andhra should be the aim of the conference. Dewan Bahadur M. Audinarayanayya, a retired Deputy Commissioner of Revenue Settlement, agreed with the larger question of provincial autonomy but felt that the resolution was premature and superfluous. He was taken by surprise because it had not been on the agenda published at first by the Committee. He thought they ought not to hurry up that discussion at the very first conference. Rao Saheb Ganti Venkata Ramiah condemned it as inconsistent and inexpedient and suggested that the opinions of other Indian linguistic groups should be ascertained before the conference could take up the issue. The heated discussion, lasting for about 3 hours, made some recall to their memory the days of the Surat fiasco. Konda Venkatappayya, the Chairman of the Reception Committee, proposed an amendment which would not commit the conference to any view in this regard; but another amendment moved by Krishna Row was accepted. The resolution as amended was passed by a majority. It stated:

That as some of the Andhras are of opinion:

  1. that, to ensure efficient administration and the promotion of the best interests of the people of India, the government will have to make sooner or later language areas the territorial basis for provincial administration;

  2. and that provincial administration on such a basis is necessary in order that self-government on colonial lines pleaded for by the Indian National Congress and provincial autonomy approved by the Government of India may develop on natural and healthy lines this Conference requests the Andhra Conference Committee, now appointed, to ascertain public opinion on the question whether the government should be asked to constitute the Telugu districts into a separate province."

[Quelle: K. V. Narayana Rao (1934 - ): The emergence of Andhra Pradesh. -- Bomby : Popular Prakashan, 1973. -- 350 S. -- S. 49ff. -- Online: The emergence of Andhra Pradesh : Narayana Rao, K. V., 1934- : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive. -- Fair use]

1915

Subramaniya Siva (Tamil சுப்பிரமணிய சிவா - Cuppiramaṇiya Civā, 1884 - 1925) über Tamil:

1915-07

We have only insisted that we should write in a Tamil that is free of English. We have never said that we should have a tanittamil that is free of Sanskrit. . . . There is little doubt however that Tamil is a unique language (tanipasai).

Nevertheless, because of the interactions between Tamilians and Aryans for a long time, Tamilians have become habituated to innumerable Sanskrit words. If we thought it was possible to easily write essays these days in a tanittamil that is free of Sanskrit, would we announce that we would reward someone for this?

[Quelle: Sumathi Ramaswamy [சுமதி ராமஸ்வாமி]: Passions of tongue : Language devotion in Tamil India 1891 - 1970. -- Berkeley : Univ. of California Pr., 1997. -- S. 147f. -- Fair use]

1915-07

Five Rupees ! Can you write pure or chaste Tamil? If you can, come forward. An admirer of Tamil has offered a reward of five rupees to the person who will contribute an article to our `Gnanabanu' in pure Tamil without using words from Sanskrit or any other language and in not less than eight pages, on either the greatness of Tamil or the history of Thiruvalluva Nayanar.

Such words "Kayam' which is merely another version in Tamil of the Sanskrit word 'Kajam' also should be avoided. In short only pure Tamil words, without any connection with the foreign languages alone should be used.

The articles should be sent to our `Gnanabanu` office within the 15th of Avani. That article which wins the prize will be pub lished in our magazine. Those who want any further information on the suject may write to the following address." Secretary "Gnanabanu" Mylapore, Madras. (Gnanabanu, July, 1915)

1915-09

"The life of a country is to be found in its language. Those who give up their mother tongue can be said to be committing suicide because of foolishness or of madness. If committing suicide is a crime against the state, he who begins to kill himself and his society by neglecting his state language is a person who commits crimes a thousand fold. Though the law of the country does not include these murderers in the list of criminals, they are culprits according to the laws of creation followed by that All-Powerful Deity who rules over the whole universe as the sole Empress" (Gnanabanu -September 1915).

1915-11

"O, you Tamil Pandits and you great men of Tamilnadu, be careful, be careful! Protect your language. Remember that the life of a society lies in its language. If the Tamil tongue gets destroyed, the Tamil people themselves will lose their name and fame. Teach those citizens of Bharat, who say unhesitatingly that Tamil does not possess a sufficient number of necessary words, that it is not so by searching for and finding out those words in the language.

"Let your tongue speak only Tamil. Let the quill that you use write only Tamil. Let your heart long for only Tamil. May Mother Tamil mercifully protect you from any danger," (Gnanabanu, November 1915).

[Quelle: M.P.Sivagnanam: Subramania Siva - Subramania Sivam (tamilnation.org). -- Zugriff am 2021-10-27. -- Fair use]

1915-04-27

Die Telugu Wochenzeitung ఆంధ్రపత్రిక (Andhra Patrika):

"These Pillais [Tamil பிள்ளை] and Ayyars [Tamil ஐயர்] will never sympathise with the Andhra movement [Telugu ఆంధ్రోద్యమం]. They came to the Andhra country to make money and go back to their native homes. Our separation from the Tamilians will certainly not affect the unity of the Indian nation hut will surely affect the supremacy of the Tamilian in the Telugu country . . . who was it that stood against the question of an Andhra province coming up for discussion in the Congress at Madras [Tamil மதராஸ் ; Telugu మద్రాస్]?

[Quelle: K. V. Narayana Rao (1934 - ): The emergence of Andhra Pradesh. -- Bombay : Popular Prakashan, 1973. -- 350 S. -- S. 148. -- Online: The emergence of Andhra Pradesh : Narayana Rao, K. V., 1934- : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive. -- Fair use]

1916

Maraimalai_Adigal  (Tamil மறைமலை அடிகள் - Maṟaimalai Aṭikaḷ, 1876 - 1950) begründet Thani Tamil Iyakkam (Tamil தனித் தமிழ் இயக்கம் - Taṉit tamiḻ iyakkam) (Pure or Independent Tamil Movement). Um 1900 hatten ca. 50% der Wörter in Schrift-Tamil ihren Ursprung im Sanskrit, 1950 sind es nur noch 20%.

"One evening, when she was barely thirteen, Nilambikai [நீலாம்பிகை] was taking a stroll in their garden with her famed father, Maraimalai Adigal (who at that time still went by his Sanskritic name, Swami Vedachalam [ வேதாசலம்]). He began to sing a verse from Ramalinga Adigal’s famous Tiruvarutpa [திருவருட்பா]; but when he came to the second line of the verse, Vedachalam stopped and said to his daughter:

“Is it not wonderful that Ramalinga Adigal has sung this song so beautifully in pure Tamil (tuyattamil)? But, instead of using the Sanskrit word tekam [தேகம்] in the second line, would it not have been better if he had used the pure Tamil (tanittamil) word, yakkai [யாக்கை]? Because Sanskrit words have been allowed in Tamil, it has lost its beauty and Tamil words have gone out of use.”

Father and daughter resolved, from that day on, to speak and write only in tanittamil [தனித் தமிழ்] (lit., “exclusively Tamil,” but more generally glossed as “pure Tamil”)  (Nilambikai 9960: iii).

This incident is cited as the originary moment of what comes to be called tanittamil iyakkam, the “pure Tamil” movement, and is dated by most scholars to 1916, though the roots of Maraimalai Adigal’s own personal predilections in this regard may be traced back to the late 1890s. The movement has invited considerable criticism and resistance, even within the devotional community. Nonetheless, it still continues to have its share of enthusiasts who publish books and journals advocating its virtues, and who seek, with varying degrees of success, to make tanittamil into an everyday habit in contemporary Tamilnadu.

For the ardent purist, there is no difference between “Tamil” and tanittamil; good Tamil is always already tanittamil, the only language in the world that is capable of flourishing without the aid of other languages (Nilambikai i960: 40-51). This has meant that for purists, even their fellow devotees who do not follow the ideals of tanittamil are, by definition, enemies of Tamil; they are not the true “sons” of their language/mother (Ilankumaran 1991: 130-36, 168-69).

 “Those who oppose tanittamil are murderers of Tamil,”

 the purists declare unequivocally (quoted in M. Tirunavukarasu 1959: 52.0).

Soon after the incident in the garden, Vedachalam Tamilized his name (and those of his children), and from then on referred to himself, at least in his Tamil publications, as Maraimalai Adigal. Vedachalam was not the first to do this."

[Quelle: Sumathi Ramaswamy [சுமதி ராமஸ்வாமி]: Passions of tongue : Language devotion in Tamil India 1891 - 1970. -- Berkeley : Univ. of California Pr., 1997. -- S. 145. -- Fair use]

"It has been estimated that even at the height of Maraimalai Adigal’s enthusiasm for tanittamil in the 1930s, at least 5 percent of the words in his texts continued to be Sanskritic (Nambi Arooran 1976: 345-46). Nevertheless, even impressionistically speaking, the marked decline in the use of foreign words, especially of Sanskritic origin, in Tamil literary, scholarly, and even bureaucratic circles over the past half century is quite striking. The tanittamil movement, however, has paid less attention to excising foreign syntactic patterns and Sanskritic rules of compounding and suffixes, Sanskritic phraseology, and so on, all of which have arguably had a more enduring impact on Tamil literary and speech styles (Annamalai 1979: 48; Kailasapathy 1986: 30-31).

Even the most ardent of purists would readily admit that it has been impossible to totally cleanse Tamil, not least because no real criteria have been developed to determine what constitutes a “pure” Tamil word. Purists castigate the continued use of non-Tamil words in short stories, novels, newspapers, and cinema, and they lament that the earlier enslavement to Sanskrit has now been supplemented by dependence on English, especially in popular speech and culture. Such laments remind us that language purification efforts, not just in Tamilnadu but elsewhere in the world, are elite literary enterprises. Typically, they appear as an imposition of a norm from above, rather than as a manifestation of a need or sentiment from below. Purists like Maraimalai Adigal even insisted that it is indolence and lack of discipline among its speakers that was responsible for Tamil’s “corruption,” and that it was the duty of disciplined, alert literati to rectify this “problem.”

“Defiling one’s speech by mixing up with it extraneous elements simply indicates laxity of discipline, looseness of character, and lack of serious purpose in life,” he scolded (Maraimalai Adigal 1980: 32)."

[Quelle: Sumathi Ramaswamy [சுமதி ராமஸ்வாமி]: Passions of tongue : Language devotion in Tamil India 1891 - 1970. -- Berkeley : Univ. of California Pr., 1997. -- S. 146. -- Fair use]

1916

Salem (Tamil சேலம்): Gründung der Tamil Scientific Terms Society

1917

Subramaniya Bharati (Tamil: சுப்ரமணிய பாரதி - Cupramaṇiya pārati, 1882 - 1921): über Tamil und Hinduismus:

"A man who has pride in Tamil (tamilapimanam [தமிழபிமானம்]) is one who embraces Hinduism (hintu tarmam [ஹிந்து தர்மம்]). That alone will illuminate the path of the devotee of Tamil. For the man who does not care for the Tevaram, the Thiruvacakam, the Tiruvaymoli, the Tirukkural, and the Kamparamayanam has no claim to be a devotee of Tamil. One who knows these texts will realize that it is through Hinduism that this world will find salvation."
(Thooran 1986: 257)

[Quelle: Sumathi Ramaswamy [சுமதி ராமஸ்வாமி]: Passions of tongue : Language devotion in Tamil India 1891 - 1970. -- Berkeley : Univ. of California Pr., 1997. -- S. 53. -- Fair use]

1917

Thanjavur (Tamil தஞ்சாவூர்): Es erscheint:

Abraham Pandithar (Tamil: ஆபிரகாம் பண்டிதர், 1859 – 1919): கருணாமிர்த சாகரம், என்னும் :  இசை தமிழ் நூல் = Karunāmirthasāgaram : a treatise on music or isait-Tamil . -- Thanjavur : Eigenverlag, 1917. -- 1208 S. : Ill. -- Online: Karunamirthasagaram ❤️ (17.16MB) ❤️ Free Download Tamil Books (tamilpdfbooks.com)


Abb.: Titelblatt von Book 2, 1946

"Abraham Pandither thus insisted in 1917:

“Those who realise the importance of the Tamil language know how it was pure and easy and unmixed and had attained a high state of excellence [on Lemuria].... But after the deluge, as the Tamilians spread over different regions and as people with different languages . . . mixed freely with them, the original grandeur of the language was lost.”

[Quelle: Sumathi Ramaswamy [சுமதி ராமஸ்வாமி]: The lost land of Lemuria : Fabulous geographies, catastrophic histories. -- Berkeley : Univ. of California Pr., 2004. -- 334 S. : Ill. -- S. 97f. -- Fair use]

1917

Es erscheint:

P. V. Manickam Naiker (Tamil மாணிக்கம் நாய்க்கர் - Māṇikkam nāykkar, 1871 - 1931): The Tamil alphabet and its mystic aspect. -- Madras : Sabapathy, 1917. -- 91 S. Ill. -- Online: The Tamil Alphabet Its Mystic Aspect : Manickam Naicker : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive


Abb.: Titelblatt

"For the real lovers of the Tamil language and people, the investigation should be of paramount interest. That able North-Indian scholar Dutt speaks of a small band of Aryan settlers in the Indus valley some 3,000 years ago, of their manly habits of living without caste barriers as they exist to-day, of their next expansion into the Gangetic valley and the aryanisation of the aboriginal inhabitants there, of the aryanisation of the Maharattas next, and of the aryanisation of the South-Indians last. According to Dutt, the aryanisation of the last mentioned took place at a period when the steel walls separating the various castes did not exist, when the intrinsic value of each individual practically determined his caste and when the Dravidas had a civilisation of their own. Even should Dutt’s description of the aryanisation be true, the real Aryan corpus in South-India must now be next to nothing. A cranial study of the various classes of the South-Indians will also confirm the same. The lecturer, being a non-Brahmin, wishes to leave nothing to be misunderstood.

His best and tried friends are mostly Brahmins and he is a sincere admirer of them. There is no denying the fact that the ancestors of the present Brahmins were the most cultured among the South-Indians at the time the said aryanisation took place and hence got crystallised into a class revered by the people. As the cultured sons of the common mother Tamil, is it not their legitimate duty to own their kinsmen and to co-operate and uplift the less lucky brethren, if they have real patriotism for the welfare of our country ? On the contrary, the general disposition of many a Brahmin is to disown his kinship with the rest of his Tamil brethren, to disown his very mother Tamil and to construct an imaginary untainted Aryan pedigree as if the Aryan alone is heaven-born. Dutt himself complains of what he calls patriotism of even the western scholars who have a bias to trace the original home of the Aryans to Babylon or near the Baltic Sea. The few historians, archaeologists, and epigraphists we have in South-India are all Brahmins, and we must be proud of their erudite discourses. However, their general trend is to assume that they are themselves Aryans and not Tamils and to take as an axiom that Tamil and Tamils owe everything to Sanskrit. At least one of them is explicit in his endeavour to establish page after page and chapter after chapter, untainted Aryan pedigree for the Brahmins and Brahmins alone among the South-Indians. As such, he has naturally no scruples to say that the Tamils have nothing excellent or high which can be claimed as their own. Whatever is bad in them is their heritage and whatever is good they owe to Sanskrit. In answer to Dr. Caldwell’s observation that ‘ in one department at least, that of ethical apothegms, it is generally maintained that Sanskrit has been outdone by Tamil’ the author above referred to is “inclined to think that the existence of so many works on the ethics of daily life is an indication of the low state of morality among the early Tamils. Because it was the Dravidian whose teeth were blunted by the eating of flesh.

Pat II—117.

that required the advice,

In his zeal, he has however forgotten that after all he has not decried the greatness of Thiruvalluvar’s work, but has run amok amidst the Tamils generalising on the description of a no-class Tamilian of that age. It would have been fair if he had quoted side by side the couplet from the same Kurai.

and demonstrated equally graphically the fact that the Brahmins, the topmost class who ate the flesh of all animals in thousands under the guise of Vedic sacrifices required this advice from a Valluva Pariah, a no-class Tamilian. If be had avowed that he is a Tamil of Tamils, if he had owned his unlucky mother Tamil and yet made these observations, there will then be at the best the credit of confession, which too is due to a wrong conception.

Is not the rationalists’ motto that the past should be judged with the aid of the present, and the unknown should be judged with the aid of the known ? If so, we have before us the present standing instance of aryanisation by infusion of blood. It is only the Pariahs, the lowest, who submit themselves to be elevated in that manner and they produce the present Aryo-Tamilian or the Eurasian race of South-India. Even as a matter of sentiment which will not be found opposed to history, we will do well to consider aryanisation by culture and not by blood, and try to retain the integrity of the Brahmin and the Non-brahmin. The influx of the Aryan band from Central Asia into the Indus valley and their further migrations are not questioned. Were they aboriginal to Central Asia? Geologists tell us, that so late as the end of the Tertiary epoch, the whole expanse from the Chinese shore to the North Sea including the present Central Asia was one ocean and that the Central Asian tableland and the Himalayas were elevated long ages after the archaic beds of the South-Indian Peninsula came into existence. That the habitable condition of South-India dates back several geological ages beyond that of Central Asia and North-India can be verified even by a layman easily by comparing the elevations of the deltas of the Cauvery, the Krishna, the Godavery and the Ganges above the sea level. Though the Cauvery is a small river, the head of its delta is over 250 feet above the sea, whereas those of the other three larger rivers range between 36 and 60 feet, showing thereby the hoary antiquity of the South-Indian peninsula. Zoologists and Palaeontologists tell us that, in the development of species, South-India ranks clearly the first. They tell us further that the most probable home of the homo or generic man in the world was the submerged Tamilagam [தமிழகம்] or Limuria. If terrestrial life started so early as the Archean era in South-India under the most congenial climatic conditions for development of species, and went on developing without interruption by any serious geological commotion down to this date, and if such life started so late as the early Quaternary era in Central Asia under climatic conditions not so congenial to a rapid development of species it is hard to conceive how the Aryans sprang up there in Central Asia indigenously. Long after the great geological commotion at the end of the Tertiary era by which Central Asia was elevated the Quarternary man should have migrated gradually from South-India towards Central Asia. There was a minor commotion of the earth within historical times causing the further loss of the Southern peninsula into the sea and the elevation of the Central Indian plateau."

[a.a.O., S. 74 - 78]

1914-11-04/06

Bezawada (Telugu విజయవాడ): Andhra Desa First Panchama Conference. Die Delegierten benennen die Konferenz um in Andhra Desa First Adi-Andhra Conference.

"After this Andhra conferences were held every year starting form village, taluk, district and regional levels. Their constant passing of resolutions in all the conferences, urging the government to label them as Adi-Andhras, Adi-Dravidas, as per the linguistic areas, forced the Madras legislative council adopt the resolution.
  1. That this council recommended to the Government that the term "panchama" or "paraya" used to designate the Ancient Dravidian community in Southern India should be deleted from Government records etc., and the term  Adi Dravida [ஆதி திராவிடர்] in the Tamil and 'Adi-Andhra' in Telugu Districts be substituted instead".
  2. On Behalf of the government an undertaking was given the government would have no objection to call the members of this community. 'Adi-Dravida' in Tamil, 'Adi-Andhra' inTelugu districts and particular members of the community 'Dravidas', if they prefer to be so called, but it would not be possible to re-edit old records. The government accordingly direct that the following terms shall in future be adopted in place of 'panchama' or 'paraya' or similar terms in all official documents."

[Quelle: Encyclopedia of Dalits in India / ed. Sanjay Paswan [Hindi संजय पासवान, 1962 - ] ; Pramanshi Jaideva [Hindi प्रमांशी जयदेव]. -- Dehli : Kalpaz. -- Vol. 10: 2002. -- S. 114. -- Fair use]

1919

Es erscheint das Tamil Gedicht:

Subramaniya Bharati (Tamil: சுப்ரமணிய பாரதி, 1882 - 1921): Good old Tamil-land:

1.    When the words resound,
'Good old Tamil-Land!'
Dulcet streams of honey
Flow into our ear:
When the words resound,
'Land of all our sires!'
A potent power indeed
Is born in our breath.

When the words.....

2.  Filled with Vedic lore,
Is our Tamil-Land:
Packed with chivalry
Is our Tamil-Land:
Maidens making love
Like celestial nymphs
Teem on every side
In our Tamil-Land.

When the words ....

3.    The Kaveri, the South Pennar,
And the
Palar river,
And the
Vaikai, witness of gloried Tamil
And the Porunai river,
All these famous streams
Flow through and nourish
The rich and fair terrain
Of our Tamil-Land.

When the words

4. The lofty mountain range
Of Triple-Tamil’s sage
Stands as a mighty guard
Of our Tamil-Land.
The various riches which abound
Upon this spacious earth
Are all found together
In our Tamil-Land.

When the words

5. One border is the edge
Of the blue ocean’s wave,
Where the virgin Goddess stands
Ever in penance rare;
At the north is Vishnu’s Hill:
Between these borders two
Compact of boundless fame
Is our Tamil-Land.

When the words

6.  It gave Valluvar the Great
For all the world to have:
 And the fame rose sky high
Of our Tamil-Land.
It made a necklace of gems,
Named ’The Lay of the Anklet’
Which grips enraptured hearts
In our Tamil-Land.

When the words

7.  Of those that went to Ceylon,
And to
Pushpaka, and Java,
And many other islands too,
And settled as dwellers there
Planting their countries' flags
Blazoned with the Tiger, and the Fish,
And made them stand supreme,
This is the Mother land.

When the words ....

8.  They are the men of might
Who dared to dash against
The hills of the Himalayan range
Whose heads knock at heaven:
They once waged a fierce war
Shattering
Kalinka's might,
They the stable Tamil Kings
Of our Tamil-Land

When the words ....

9. The fame spread far and wide
Among the Chinese, and the Egyptians,
And in the Greek and Arab homelands,
And in other lands as well,
Of their Arts, and Mystic Wisdom,
And techniques of War and Trade,
For these were nurtured well indeed
In our Tamil-Land

When the words....

P.N.A. [Übersetzung: Thiru P.N.Appuswami]

Note: The Tamil original forms part of Nattu-p-pattu published in 1919 by Parali Su. Nellai Appar.

[Quelle: Bharati Patalkal : Tamil University Thanjavur Tamilnadu India : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive. -- Fair use]

1919

Es erscheint das Tamil Gedicht:

Subramaniya Bharati (Tamil: சுப்ரமணிய பாரதி, 1882 - 1921): தமிழ் (Tamil)

1.  Of all the tongues that I have sampled.
For sweetness Tamil’s unexampled:
But now become illiterate mutes
Our lives are worse than those of brutes;
Grown recreant to our ancient trust
Our treasures in a heap have gone to rust.
Tamil's mellifluous sounds
Must reach the world's utmost bounds,
If we are to lift our heads again,
Instead of wasting our time in vain.

2. Of all the bards that I’ve explored
None in the world are richer-ored
Than
Kamban, Valluvar, Ilankovan, --
Immortal trinity — our own
This is the truth unvarnished, plain, —
Free from all vainglorious strain.
Deaf, dumb and blind wretches we live, —
We can’t our greatness e’er revive
So long as our native virile speech
Is not allowed much wider reach.

3.  To enrich, refine and modernise
Our tongue, new writers must arise;
 Translations too we must produce
From foreign classics for our use.
What boots it if we idly prate
Of our glorious past in our present state?
The world will recognize our worth
 If genius midst us gain takes birth.

4. Unless our hearts by truth are lighted,
Our speech with wings will not be flighted.
Self-purified we then may strive
Our arts and poetry to revive.
Then our renascence in a flood,
Will lead us into a world of good.
The blind long fallen in the ditch
Will be blessed with vision strange and rich,
And rise with the rise of Tamil strains
Chronicling our varied gains.
Like gods assuming human birth
We’d then live glorious on earth.

- P.M. [Übersetzung: Prof. P. Mahadevan]

Note: The Tamil original forms part of  Nattu-p-pattu.

[Quelle: Bharati Patalkal : Tamil University Thanjavur Tamilnadu India : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive. -- Fair use]

1919

Subramaniya Bharati (Tamil: சுப்ரமணிய பாரதி, 1882 - 1921) in einem Tamil Gedicht:

Tamiḻttāy [Tamil தமிழ்த்தாய் = Mutter Tamil] spricht:

"The primordial Shiva gave birth to me;
The Aryan son
Agastya saw me and took delight;
That Brahman endowed me with a grammar, complete and perfect.
(Bharati 1987: 529)"

"“Tamil will die a slow death
The languages of the West will triumph in this world.”
So says the simpleton;
Alas! what an accusation!
Go forth in all eight directions!
Bring back here the wealth of all learning!
By the grace of my father, and the penance of our learned scholars, this great taint will be effaced,
With lofty fame I shall last forever in this world!
(Bharati 1987: 531)"

[Quelle: Sumathi Ramaswamy [சுமதி ராமஸ்வாமி]: Passions of tongue : Language devotion in Tamil India 1891 - 1970. -- Berkeley : Univ. of California Pr., 1997. -- S. 51f;. -- Fair use]

1920

Tirunelveli (Tamil திருநெல்வேலி): Gründung der South India Saiva Siddhanta Works Publishing Society Ltd. (Tamil சைவ சித்தாந்த நூற்பதிப்புக் கழகம் - Caiva cittānta nūṟpatippuk kaḻakam)

1920

Tod von J. M. Nallaswami Pillai (Tamil நல்லசுவாமி பிள்ளை, 1864 - 1920)

"J M Nallaswami Pillai was a contemporary of Vedanayagam Pillai (1826-1889) and Dr U V Swaminatha Iyer (1855-1941). He was a multi-faceted genius and his wide ranging literary activities as a powerful writer, translator and propagandist of Saiva Siddhanta were mainly responsible for re-kindling the revival of academic interest in Saiva Siddhanta in Europe and America in the first decade of 20th century. He was acknowledged by all his contemporaries as an outstanding authority on the philosophical works known as Saiva Siddhanta Sastras. By his translations of nine (9) of the fourteen (14) books coming under this category and by his authoritative commentaries and essays on the Saiva Siddhanta he become, probably, the most voluminous writer on that philosophical system in the English language.

Nallaswami Pillai was born in a respectable Vellala Family at Trichirappalli on 24 November, 1864. He came from a very influential family, many of whose ancestors had held high official positions under the Carnatic Nawabs. His father was Manickam Pillai who was employed as a Clark in the District Police Office at Tiruchirappalli. He studied at SPG High School in Tiruchirappalli, passing the Matriculation Examination with Distinction in 1879. He then went to SPG College, Tiruchirappali for his Intermediate College Education.

His College Principal Mr. C.W. Pearco, an Englishman, was the first recognize the genius of Nallaswami Pillai and described him as 'a radical student'. He passed his Intermediate Examination in First Class obtaining the First Rank in 1881. Soon thereafter he joined the Presidency College, Madras in 1881 and passed his B.A. with distinction in 1884. What is significant is that he took up Logic and Philosophy as his special subjects in his BA Class and this academic training turned out to be a great asset in his activities as a Philosopher and Religious Savant in his later years. Two distinguished Professors of Presidency College Dr D Duncan and Mr Bilderbeck rated Nallaswami Pillai as 'An outstanding Scholar with an incisive mind with concern for minuteness and exactness'.

In 1884, he was married to Lakshmi Ammal who was the daughter of one of his relations called Parasurama Pillai of Tiruchirappali. He led the ideal life of a Grihasta.

After qualifying for Law from the Madras Law College, he enrolled himself as a High Court 'Vakil' in 1887 and worked as a junior under Sir S. Subramania Aiyar, at Madurai. Sir S. Subramania Aiyar was a leader of the Madurai Bar then. Apart from devoting himself to his legal work and public affairs, Nallaswami Pillai started concentrating on the study and discussion of Religious and Philosophical Subject, particularly Saiva Siddhanta.

Nallaswami Pillai was elected as Member of the Madurai Municipal Council. His brilliance as a Lawyer was noticed by Mr. Ross, I.C.S. who was then the District and Sessions Judge at Madurai. On his recommendation, Nallaswami was recruited to the Judiciary in 1893 as District Munsif, in which capacity he served for 20 years in various places. Though he became a District Munsif early in his life, he was not one of those routine beings who get lost in a job without regard for the finer instincts of a nobler and detached life. He early in his life he had developed a proper perspective on all aspects of leading a meaningful life with a balanced sense of proportion.

Nallaswami Pillai resigned from his Judicial post and reverted to the Bar in Madurai in 1912. He continued his practise as a Lawyer at Madurai till his death in 1920 at the comparatively early age of 56.

Nallaswami Pillai is best remembered as a Tamil Savant, whose writings on the Saiva Siddhanta Philosophy have an enduring value. He came early under the influence of the writings of Arumuga Navalar of Jaffna and Somasundara Nayagar of Madras, two of the most powerful champions of Saiva revivalism of the last century.

In 1895 Nallaswami Pillai published his English translation and exposition of Sivagnana Bodham of Meikanda Devar, a short work of twelve sutras, with explanatory prose and some illustrative stanzas. The Sivaghana Bodham is considered to be the most authentic Saiva Siddhanta scripture for which a most brilliant and authoritative commentary was written by Sivagnana Swamigal in the 18th century. It is known as the 'Mapadiyam' (Tamil form of Mahabhashyam). Nallaswami Pillai's translation and exposition are based on this commentary. In the sixties of the 19th century an English translation of this work was published by Rev. Hoisington but it did not attract as much notice as that of Nallaswami Pillai's which was better in every respect.

Nallaswami Pillai's English translation of Sivagnana Bodam in 1895, attracted worldwide attention in the West. In this book he wrote:

'Sivagnana Bodham is a unique book of unrivalled compression of words and ideas alike.Its terseness of diction and brevity of expression will baffle the powers of exposition and beggar the attempts at translation by even the biggest of Tamil Pundits.'

In June 1897, in commemoration of the Diamond Jubilee of the accession of the Queen Empress Victoria to the British throne, Nallaswami Pillai started a monthly journal called the SIDDHANTA DIPIKA OR THE LIGHT OF TRUTH at Madras.

Writing in the first issue on 'OUR AIMS' he said:

'We have considered it a shame that we should be coached in our Vedas and Vedanta by German Professors on the banks of the Rhine in Europe and that an American from a far off country should be the first translator of the foremost work in Tami Philosophy and that an old Oxford Professor like Dr G U Pope should sit poring over the Tamil 'WORD' and render into English verse. Far from condemning such noble examples which redound greatly to the glory of the European, I would say 'Noble examples they! May we follow! Our journal will devote itself to bring out translations of rare works in Sanskrit and Tamil, Literary, Philosophical and Religious, will devote its pages to a more critical and historical study of Indian Religious Systems, to develop a taste for and to induce a proper and more appreciative cultivation of our Indian Classical and Vernacular Languages and Literature. Greater attention will be paid to the language and history of South India and the Dravidian Philosophy and Religion will find their best exposition in its pages and in this respect it is intended to supply a real and absolutely felt public want.'

Nallaswami Pillai also published English translations of Tirumular's great poem Tirumantiram and nine of the Siddhanta works in his monthly magazine Siddhanta Dipika. They were all published under his personal guidance for 14 years from 1897 to 1911 for popularising Tamil Classics and Saiva Siddhanta Philosophy among the English knowing public. He wrote many essays on the various aspects of this system, which were later, collected and published as a book under the title 'Studies in the Saiva Siddhanta', which shows his power as a lucid thinker and forceful and dignified controversialist.

His magnum opus, however, was his English translation of the Sivagnana Siddhiyar with a commentary, which, though based on earlier works was singularly profound. This appeared in a serial form for several years in the Siddhanta Dipika and was later published in a book form in 1913 with a learned introduction. The author of Sivagnana Sidhiyar was Arulnandi Sivacharya who was a most learned Vedic and Agamic Brahmin Scholar of his age. He became a disciple of the young Vellala saint Meikanda Devar, considering him to be an illumined soul and set an example of totally ignoring caste in the religious and spiritual field, which was followed by the equally great Umapathy Sivacharya. There had been an earlier translation of the Sivagnana Siddhiyar by Dr. Graul, a German scholar but it was only a pioneer attempt, which was replaced by Nallaswami Pillai's more accurate and brilliant translation...

In the Convention of Religions held at Calcutta in 1907 and at Allahabad in 1911, it was Nallaswami Pillai who was the spokesman for Saivism and the Siddhanta philosophy and delivered stirring addresses.

The value of his works was recognised and their entire copyright was acquired by the Dharmapuram Mutt, which has published a few of his works. A collection of all his English writings including his translations of the religious books, if brought out in a single well-edited volume, will show the wide range of his learning, the strength of his intellect and the tireless and devoted work, which he did for popularising the Saiva Siddhanta philosophy and establish his lasting fame as the most well read and level headed Saiva Siddhanta scholar of his age."

Writings

  • English Translation of Sivagnana Bodham, 1895
  • Light of Truth or Siddhanta Deepika.(An English Monthly), First Series Vols. I to VI, 1897
  • சித்தாந்த தீபிகை - உண்மை விளக்கம், Volume 1
  • English Translation of Sivagnana Siddhiar 1897
  • Cameos from Tamil Literature, 1897
  • English Translation of Tirumular's Thimantiram,1897
  • English Translation of Unmai Vilakkam ,1902
  • Siddhanta Deepika and Agamic Review, Second Series Vols. II to XIV. 1906-1914
  • English Translation of Sri Kanta Bashyam 1906
  • English Translation of Siddhanta Gnana Ratnavali, 1907
  • English Translation of Dravida Maha Bashyam, 1907
  • Studies in Saiva Siddhanta (A Collection of Essays in English) 1911
  • Sekkizhars Life of Salva Saints in English,1912
  • English Translation of Irupa - lrupahdo , 1912
  • English Translation of Vina Venba, 1913
  • English Translation of Kodi Kavi, 1914

[Quelle: V. S. Sundaram: J.M.Nallaswami Pillai - One Hundred Tamils of 29th Century (tamilnation.org). -- Zugriff am 2021-10-21. -- Fair use]

1921

Swaminatha Upatiyayan in einem Tamil Buch über "Shaivism and Tamil language":

“In the whole wide world, there is no greater god than Paramashivam [Shiva]; no religion loftier than Shaivism; no land more superior to the Tamil land; no language more divine than Tamil . . . and no people more auspiciously pure than Tamilians” (Swaminatha Upatiyayan 1921: 20).

[Quelle: Sumathi Ramaswamy [சுமதி ராமஸ்வாமி]: Passions of tongue : Language devotion in Tamil India 1891 - 1970. -- Berkeley : Univ. of California Pr., 1997. -- S. 32. -- Fair use]

1921

Es erscheint:

Maraimalai_Adigal  (Tamil மறைமலை அடிகள், 1876 - 1950): அறிவுரைக் கொத்து (Ratschläge)

Darin: தமிழ்நாட்டவரும் (Sotheners and Westeners):

"This issue, glossed as tamil aruccanai [தமிழ் அருச்சனை ] (Tamil worship), turned around the use of Tamil and its religious texts in temples in Tamilnadu where Sanskrit was still the dominant liturgical language. Neo-Shaivism insisted that in ancient Shaiva religion, it was Tamil, rather than Sanskrit, that was used as language of worship. But then

“[Brahmans] introduced the words of their northern language in which one can see very little trace of any kind of divinity, empowered them, and denigrated our great and glorious Tamil scriptures, the Tevaram and the Tiruvacakam, as ‘songs of the Shudras’ ” (Maraimalai Adigal 1967a: 150)."

[Quelle: Sumathi Ramaswamy [சுமதி ராமஸ்வாமி]: Passions of tongue : Language devotion in Tamil India 1891 - 1970. -- Berkeley : Univ. of California Pr., 1997. -- S. 138. -- Fair use]

1921-09-11

Madras (Tamil மதராஸ்): Tod des nationalistischen Dichters Subramaniya Bharati (Tamil: சுப்ரமணிய பாரதி - Cupramaṇiya Pārati, 1882 - 1921). Seine Werke haben großen Einfluss auf Narendra Modi (Gujarati: નરેંદ્ર દામોદરદાસ મોદી, 1950 - ).

Wikipedia: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subramaniya_Bharati / https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subramania_Bharati. -- Zugriff am 2018-05-17


Abb.: Briefmarke, 1960
[Wikimedia / GODL]

Subramania Bharathi
Born 11 December 1882
 

EttayapuramEttaiyapuram estateBritish India

Died 12 September 1921 (aged 38)
 

MadrasMadras PresidencyBritish India
(present-day Tamil Nadu, India)

Other names Bharathi, Subbaiah, Sakthi Dasan, Mahakavi, Mundasu Kavignar, Veera Kavi, Selly Dasan
Citizenship British Raj
Occupation Journalist, poet, writer, teacher, patriot, freedom fighter
Movement Indian independence movement
Spouse(s) Chellamma/Kannamma (m. 1896–1921)
Children 2

Englische Übersetzung seiner Gedichte: Bharati Patalkal : Tamil University Thanjavur Tamilnadu India : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

"He was born Chinnaswami Subramania (1882-1921) in a Brahmin family in a Tinnevelly town we have encountered before, Ettayapuram, but teachers who admired the eleven-year-old’s facility for lyrics named him Bharati, a synonym for Saraswati, the goddess of learning.

Interested also in languages, the boy was soon fluent, apart from Tamil, in Sanskrit, English and Hindi, perhaps helped with the last by an early journey to Varanasi.

In 1904, he joined the Swadesamitran in Madras, working for eighteen months as a sub-editor and translator under G. Subramania Iyer, the forceful editor. Influenced or encouraged by Iyer, Bharati attended three Congress sessions, in Varanasi in 1905, Calcutta in 1906, and Surat in 1907. In Calcutta, Vivekananda’s Irish disciple, Sister Nivedita as she was called, inspired Bharati, and he acquired a smattering of Bengali.

Along with Bharati in Surat was VOC [V. O. Chidambaram Pillai], who was older to him by ten years. Sharing similar interests and views, the two had become close friends. When the Congress split in Surat, Bharati had no hesitation in siding with the extremists led by Tilak, Aurobindo and VOC.

In journals, in Madras, now edited by Bharati—interestingly, the Tamil one was called India and the English journal Bala Bharatam (Young Bharat)—he defended the extremists and mocked the moderates, including in cartoons. The latter were a new feature in South Indian journalism, with Bharati usually conceiving a cartoon and hiring an artist to sketch it.

Like VOC, Bharati responded with intensity in 1907 to Bipin Chandra Pal’s speeches in Madras, and he seems to have made popular orations of his own on the beach. The Tinnevelly artist, a master of romantic and mystical poetry, who ‘transmuted vague feelings of Tamil patriotism into lyric expression’, was now on fire as an activist.

However, preferring exile in Pondicherry to arrest in Madras, he moved in 1908 to the French territory, where he read, composed anew, or translated texts such as the Gita, Bankim’s ‘Vande Mataram’ song, and pieces by Tagore, into Tamil verse or prose. He remained in Pondicherry during World War I, interacting on occasion with other eminent exiles, including Aurobindo.

The Pondicherry years were financially hard, and callers found Bharati agitated. A correspondent of The Hindu who met Bharati in the French territory was struck by the poet’s ‘manner of speaking’. Apparently Bharati would suddenly stand up in the middle of a conversation, or suddenly sit down, and ‘thump’ with passion.

In November 1918, when the war ended, he ventured out of the French territory. Detained in nearby Cuddalore, he was released after three weeks—the result, apparently, of an intervention by an Irishwoman who had made India her home—Annie Besant.

In Madras in the following year, when Gandhi visited the south, his host, Chakravarti Rajagopalachari Chakravarti Rajagopalachari, introduced Bharati to him as ‘our national bard’. Patriotic verses, devotional, philosophical and autobiographical ones, verses narrating great stories—Bharati had written them all.

But Madras, where he lived in a house in Triplicane, seemed to neglect him. Bharati was only thirty-nine when he died there in September 1921, the eventual result, it was said, of an injury received from a temple elephant he had regularly fed. Not many mourners joined the funeral of one after whom cities across India would later name streets.

Renaming a street would prove easier than translating the poet. In 2012, his granddaughter S. Vijaya Bharati, a scholar herself, would write in evident distress:

As far as English is concerned, Bharati has never found a good translator. I have been reading translations of Bharati’s poems by various authors over the past four decades, and I have yet to see a satisfactory translation of Bharati."

[Quelle: Rajmohan Gandhi (Hindi राजमोहन गांधी, 1935 - ): Modern South India : A history from the 17th century to our times. -- New Delhi : Aleph, 2018. -- S. 240ff. -- Fair use]

"“In Tamilnadu, Tamil ought to be preeminent. All over India, may Sanskrit flourish, as it always has. To accomplish the unification of our Indian nation, everyone should know Sanskrit. Nonetheless, in Tamilnadu, Tamil should flourish with great eminence” (Bharati 1988: 22.9)."

[Quelle: Sumathi Ramaswamy [சுமதி ராமஸ்வாமி]: Passions of tongue : Language devotion in Tamil India 1891 - 1970. -- Berkeley : Univ. of California Pr., 1997. -- S. 49. -- Fair use]

1922

Es erscheint das folgende Tamil Gedicht von Namakkal V. Ramalingam (Tamil நாமக்கல் கவிஞர் வெ. இராமலிங்கம் பிள்ளை - Nāmakkal Kaviñar Ve. Irāmaliṅkam Piḷḷai,, 1888 - 1972):

"Intiyattāy [Tamil இந்தியத்தாய் = Mutter Indien] languishes in sorrow, and you speak of your own community!
That is disgraceful!
O Tamilian, break the chains that enslave that venerable woman ... !
Long live the Tamil land!
May our Tamil language flourish, so that our Intiyattay who supports us may find fulfillment.
(Ramalinga Pillai 1988: 29)"

[Quelle: Sumathi Ramaswamy [சுமதி ராமஸ்வாமி]: Passions of tongue : Language devotion in Tamil India 1891 - 1970. -- Berkeley : Univ. of California Pr., 1997. -- S. 48. -- Fair use]

1923

Tirunelveli (Tamil திருநெல்வேலி):  Es erscheint die Tamil Zeitschrift zu செந்தமிழ் - Centamiḻ = Reinem Tamil

 :

செந்தமிழ் செல்வி (Centamiḻ celvi) / hrsg von South India Saiva Siddhanta Works Publishing Society Ltd., Tinnevelly, Ltd. -- Heft 1974-01 online: * (tamildigitallibrary.in)


Abb.: Titelblatt von Jahrgang XLIX, 1974
[Fair use]

 

1924

Es erscheint:

Thiru._V._Kalyanasundaram (Tamil திரு. வி. கலியாணசுந்தரனார் - Tiru. Vi. Kaliyāṇacuntaraṉār, 1883 - 1953):  தாய்மொழி - Tāymoḻi [Muttersprache]. -- in: நவசக்தி (Navasakti)

“What is the condition of our mother tongue, Tamil, today? Where is Tamiḻttāy [Tamil தமிழ்த்தாய் = Mutter Tamil]? Does she adorn the seat of government? Does she preside over our associations? Does she flourish in our legislative chambers? Can we at least see her in our schools and colleges? Can we spot her in those political bodies that claim to fight for our rights? At the least, is there a place for her in Tamil newspapers?”

(Kalyanasundaranar 1935: 19).

[Quelle: Sumathi Ramaswamy [சுமதி ராமஸ்வாமி]: Passions of tongue : Language devotion in Tamil India 1891 - 1970. -- Berkeley : Univ. of California Pr., 1997. -- S. 47. -- Fair use]

What is the condition of our mother tongue, Tamil, today? Where is Tamiḻttāy [Tamil தமிழ்த்தாய் = Mutter Tamil]? Does she adorn the seat of government? Does she preside over our associations? Does she flourish in our legislative chambers? Can we at least see her in our schools and colleges? Can we spot her in those political bodies that claim to fight for our rights? At the least, is there a place for her in Tamil newspapers?”

(Kalyanasundaranar 1935: 19).

[Quelle: Sumathi Ramaswamy [சுமதி ராமஸ்வாமி]: Passions of tongue : Language devotion in Tamil India 1891 - 1970. -- Berkeley : Univ. of California Pr., 1997. -- S. 47. -- Fair use]

"Every man reveres the woman who gives birth to him, the nation (natu [நாடு]) where he was born, and the language he speaks, by referring to these as his “mother.” As much as the love he has for the mother who carried him, ought to be his love for the nation that delivers him, and the language that rears him. A man who does not revere his nation and his language is like the sinner who does not reverence his own mother. Indeed, the language that one speaks is the very wellspring of the love for one’s mother, and of devotion to one’s motherland. A man who is not devoted to the mother tongue he speaks is a man who has reviled his own mother and his own nation."
(Kalyanasundaranar 1935: 19)

[Quelle: Sumathi Ramaswamy [சுமதி ராமஸ்வாமி]: Passions of tongue : Language devotion in Tamil India 1891 - 1970. -- Berkeley : Univ. of California Pr., 1997. -- S. 58. -- Fair use]

1925

Madras (Tamil மதராஸ்): S. Ramanathan (Tamil எஸ். இராமநாதன் - Es. Irāmanātaṉ, 1895 - 1970) gründet das Self-Respect Movement (Tamil சுயமரியாதை இயக்கம் - Cuyamariyātai iyakkam)

Periyar E. V. Ramasamy (Tamil ஈ. வெ. இராமசாமி, 1879 - 1973), der Anführer des Self-Respect Movement schreibt darüber:

"GENESIS OF SELF-RESPECT MOVEMENT

I started a movement and named it as the ‘Self-Respect Movement’ in 1925. It is known to all. I am bound to state why it was started. Many may like to know the objectives of the movement. At the outset, I must say a few words about myself. Then only it will be possible to conclude whether what I did was right or wrong.

I had no feelings about caste or religion from my childhood days. In other words I did not follow them. But when circumstances forced me I pretended to observe them. Similarly I had no faith in God. In all matters I did, I never thought whether God would punish me! I did not do anything thinking that it would please God. In my early years, I had no remembrance I have ever believed in god or religion or caste really! I have to reminiscence about this many times in the past also. I do not know as to when I really lost faith in all these.

CASTE-FANATICISM EVEN IN DRINKING WATER

When I was just six years old, I was sent to a pial school. It was just at a short distance from my home in Erode. Around the school there were few houses inhabited by Chettiars, trading in oil. Oil mills were working always. A few people residing on platforms were manufacturing mats and baskets out of bamboo. Some Muslims too were residing in that area. It was clear that Chettiars, bamboo article makers and Muslims were dwelling in that area.

In those days, other caste people would not take any food in their houses. So before sending me to school I was advised not to move with these people. I was strictly warned not to eat or drink in their houses. If at all I felt thirsty, I was asked to take water from the teacher’s house. The teacher was a strict vegetarian. He belonged to a caste called ‘Odhuvar’. In his house a small girl used to place a brass tumbler on the ground, and pour water into it. I was instructed to lift the vessel and drink without sipping. After drinking I was asked to keep the vessel upside down. After that she would pour water on the vessel, lift it and then take it into the house. That was the normal practice adopted in those days by high-caste Hindus to 'purify’ the vessel touched by a person belonging to a low-caste.

Because I was not allowed to sip water from the vessel, a part of the water would fall on my body. Only a little water would go into the mouth. Some times water would enter my nose and cause trouble. I had to spit out water instantly. Sometimes the girl would get angry on seeing this. So I decided not to take water from the house of the teacher.

The boys of Vaniya Chettiar community never went to the teacher’s house for drinking water. They will stand in the class, show their thumbs and the teacher would let them go out and return soon. They would take water from the Chettiars’ houses nearby.

One day I thought that I could join them and take water in a Chettiar’s house. When a Chettiar boy showed his thumb I also stood up and showed my thumb. The teacher permitted both of us to leave the class. The teacher asked me where I was running to. “For drinking water” I replied. “Are you going with him?” asked my Master. So I went to the teacher’s house. When I returned, my body was wet. My dhotis too were partly drenched in water. Next day I decided to accompany a Chettiar boy for drinking water. I made the necessary arrangement previously. I stood up in the class first and showed my pointing finger as though I am going out to pass urine. The teacher nodded his head. I went out and stood behind the house of the teacher. The Chettiar boy took the permission from the teacher to quench his thirst. He came out. We both joined together and ran up to his house. He brought me a glass of water.

PUNISHMENT FOR MOVING WITH LOW CASTES

I drank that water by sipping, as I would do in my house. Seeing this the lady of the house asked me whether I would not be punished for drinking water in her house. I said no one in my house would take me to task. She asked my friend Palaniappan to wash the glass I used. Then I ran back to the school.

On another occasion I drank the water in the house of a person who made bamboo articles. Gradually I began to taste the dishes prepared in their houses. Somehow this matter reached my house. At that time my family was very rich. Our people were observing the rituals like orthodox Brahmins. Always there was talk of divinity in my house. But my father was not much worried. He simply chided me saying ‘ Don’t behave like that again.’ But my mother was very much perturbed. She would feel as though she had lost something precious. But nothing stood in my way. I even ate whatever the Muslim boys offered me. My parents came to know about this also. By this time my school career was stopped. I was then only ten years old.

I was very closely associated with those with whom I should not. I was not expected to move freely. My close movement with communities, which were considered low and despicable, was the main impediment to my education. I was considered to be a ruffian because of my movements and behaviour. My feet were chained to logs of wood. Yet I used to move about with my usual company. This continued for fifteen days!. I used to carry the logs on my shoulder and go about on my usual rounds. At last I was taken away from that school and sent to a government school. Even there I was stopped in two years. I was only 12 years at that time.

RATIONAL QUESTIONS TO RELIGIOUS PREACHERS

I was sent to our own business shop. My work was to mark the bags and auction the goods. During my leisure time, I took keen interest in discussing the puranas (mythologies). In those days Sanyasis (Saints), Bhagavathars, religious mendicants had great sway over our family. I disliked them. I used to heckle them and make fun of what they said. I used to pester them with questions and make them feel embarrassed. Gradually this practice led to my taking interest in chatting. This also helped me to spend my leisure time usefully. In fact this practice gave me lively interest.

Moreover the religious pundits (scholars) of Vaishnavism and Saivism were performing ‘Kalatshepams’ (Story Discourse with songs) in our house. This was done to gain a status and name in the society, as my family was rolling in money. My mother used to hear the religious discourses with devotion. My father was simply pleased with all these. So far as I was concerned, I naturally, learnt all about the Hindu religion and its puranas. I used to put a volley of questions to the pundits. For some, they struggled to answer. Different pundits gave different clarifications. This made me more enthusiastic and incisive. Neighbours were struck with my intelligence. Though sometimes my father felt annoyed, in his heart of hearts, he appreciated my brilliance.

Out of all these I began to lose faith in castes, religions, God and Sastras (Hindu Doctrines).

NOT A VICTIM TO LIQUORS

It is said that one’s association and surrounding, give scope to the individual to determine one’s life, mission and ideals. By experience it may be true. But in no field of activity I was influenced by association or surrounding. On the contrary I was never a victim of my surrounding and association . Let me explain this further. When I was in my youth I was surrounded by friends who were mostly accustomed to drink. This was during the period when I was 20 to 30 years of age. Further the government officers, Zamindars and Mirasdars who were very affectionate also had the habit of consuming liquor. Many nights I used to enjoy their Company and take leave of them in the morning. Every night I used to spend Rs.40, 50,60 on liquor like brandy. I would myself mix the liquor with soda in glasses and offer them as a mark of respect. When they got intoxicated some of them used to spit the liquor on me. On one occasion, a deputy collector and a salt commissioner pushed me to the ground and forcibly tried to pour liquor into my mouth. I say this to prove that association or surrounding had no power to influence me, I never had the interest to taste any liquor. Yet my wife used to suspect me because of my association and surroundings. She would ask me to open my mouth and try to smell whether I had consumed any liquor. Then only she would be satisfied.

Inspite of my being associated with this sort of society, I was very successful in my business. My father reposed great confidence in me. He removed the name board of the shop bearing his name and replaced it with my name. Even in public matters he deputed me to represent him.

The works of temples and devasthanams were conducted as if they were purely personal affairs In this aspect also my father made me prominent. By doing this, he expected a change in my life. He might have thought that I would become religious and have faith in god.

I acted as the secretary and president of the Devasthana-Committee.

ERADICATING EVILS OF CASTE AND RELIGION

While the matters were such, whatever responsibility I accepted, I did the duties as they should be done. Even in matters which I disbelieved, I was very honest, sincere and more careful.

My real interest and resolve slowly grew towards eradicating the evils of caste and religion. Even in that lofty ideal, I did not deem that I would be the only fit person to do it. Somehow we were leading a very happy life. Without depending on anyone for anything our family flourished. What else is needed for a happy life. In other words, a man needs a healthy body and determination to work hard for his ideals. He should not be lazy or dependent on others for anything.

One should not change or give up his ideals for selfish gains or for getting the favour of others. A man must have such a freedom to pursue his ideals till his death.

I think I had that freedom and unique status. It is this freedom I enjoy and values most, that enables me to pursue my ideals. I am in no way blindly resolute.

If my senses are sensitive at the time of my death, I would feel happy about my life and die peacefully. I will be completely satisfied. I will not have any grouse or complaint. I will not feel that I have left anything unfinished.

Because I am alive, my life must have some work. There is no life without work. My mission was decided by me. I resolved to eradicate the evils of casteism. I decided to crusade against god and superstitions. My aim was to work with interest for the welfare of the society. I do, what all I can to better the society. When this feeling gradually developed, I took it as my full time life-work to reform the society.

WHY SELF-RESPECT MOVEMENT WAS STARTED?

I started the Self-Respect Movement with the same motive. If my ambition is fulfilled the class hatred in society will cease. Individuals will have no grievances. All these may exist in society merely for recreation! Even as people play or gamble on holidays, meet with dejection, worries, dissatisfaction, by nature’s action the society may be unnecessarily annoyed. It is common not only to human beings but to all living beings. So any man will have to face the good and the bad in life. With awareness of this I have launched the movement. This is otherwise interpreted as ‘Nish Kamiya Karma’, that is discharging duties without expecting good reward. Why should any one do so? When a man does something expecting some good, he will have to meet with worries. But in reality a living being has to choose some work or other. I have undertaken the Self-Respect movement as the work for me in life. But in this work I did not get myself dejected. It always gives me interest.

The philosophy of Self-Respect Movement is known to the world. The cause and effect theory is accepted by the wise world. The human being seeks the reasons for everything. He has begun to conduct research of nature. A life with ignorance is considered as a slave’s life. This is the doctrine of Self-Respect Movement. Before doing anything, one should think whether it is right or wrong, see the causes, analyse things, do research, and respect the truths. This is what the Self-Respect means. Freedom and Self-Respect are closely related.

Those who are for freedom today are neglecting the self-respect and human dignity of man. This is nothing but absurd. Without self-respect there will be no good of freedom.

It is the self-respect ideal that commands feelings of freedom. The freedom of the self-respect prevails strikingly. But the freedom of the real freedom lovers will not be clear even to himself. Even if he understands, it may be only in the case of particular thing.

WRONG CONCEPTIONS OF GANDHI

For example, take the concept of political freedom. Mr. Gandhi and Mr. Jawaharlal are the two luminaries in politics.

Gandhi says, revitalising Hinduism and old method of Varnasharma Dharma (Code of Casteism) is freedom. Deliverance from British rule is considered as freedom. Prevalent sorrows in the human society can not be wiped out because, that freedom will create more problems than solve some. It is said that British subjects enjoy the greatest freedom. But you know the king himself had to abdicate the crown to marry the lady he loved and that too it was precipitated by the so-called elected representatives. If it is so, do you believe that there will be any self-respect in the freedom of Gandhi or Nehru? Do you think the British king would have forfeited the right to marry, if there was self-respect with freedom? There is nothing so precious to man in life as self-respect and basic human right.

Though the Self-Respect Movement made a very humble beginning, it had to face many obstacles and repression. At many stages, there were critical dangers. Why? The Self-Respect Movement has created a stir in Tamil Nadu, Malayala Nadu, Andhra Nadu in the social sphere. It has made Gandhi also do somersaults. Men are now demanding rights. High and low caste significations are fast fading away. Bible and Quran are now given new interpretations. If only congress had not counteracted, the Self-Respect Movement would have spread even throughout the length and breadth of India. Brahminism would have been completely routed and effaced out of existence.

We are going to propagate the ideals all over India. Now our youths are eager to undertake the task.

Youths, get ready for the task!

SELF-RESPECT AND GOD AND RELIGION

Religion is the sum of the rules related to cooperative living and code of conduct needed for a society. Self-Respect Movement is not against such a harmonious society. Even if it is said that religion is needed to reach god we will not interfere. It is after all an individual’s personal affair.

But, if religion destroys the wisdom in the society, if it endangers the self-respect, if humanity is differentiated as high and low, if it brings disunity and demolishes freedom, our Self-Respect Movement will not leave it. Take for example numerous religions. Let us not worry about the religions of foreigners. Let us consider Hinduism, which is said to be our religion of India.

Is there any other reason for Indians to be so disunited? Is not Hinduism responsible for the creation of so many divisions and differences? Is not Hinduism responsible for the creation of so many castes, that too some as high and some as low? The Vedas and Sastras (Hindu Doctrines) prove these. If we are to get rid of castes and un-touchability without converting to other religions like Islam, think over whether anyone else except Brahmin is enjoying so much facility and freedom in social and economic fields. What else is needed to prove that Hindu religion should be destroyed? No one thinks about what religion has done to humanity.

The evils caused by the intoxicating drinks are lesser, when compared to the evils caused by religious fanaticism. Liquor spoils only when consumed. Religion spoils you the moment you think of it.

Religion not only creates the high and low discrimination in our social life, but also establishes high and low discrimination in our economy. Think over!. Has not religion created a separate class of people who are hard working and a separate class of people who enjoy without any hard work?

The wealth of the world is denied to the toiling masses. Lazy fellows who do not exert or work are able to enjoy the wealth of the world. Is it not because of religion? Common man is in poverty. He is made a slave, a low caste and heinous human being. Those who have got exemption to work by religion are free from worries and are able to amass wealth and subordinate all others on account of this religion.

NO CASTEISM AMONG BIRDS OR ANIMALS

Birds, animals, worms, which are considered to be devoid of rationalism do not create castes, differences as high and low, in their own species. But man considered to be a rational being is suffering from all these because of religion.

Amongst dogs you don’t have a brahmin dog and pariah (untouchable) dog. Among donkeys and monkeys we do not find. But amongst men you have. Why? Is it not because of our religion? How many years old is Hinduism? What good has it done to Society so far.? The low caste existed even in the days of Rama who was considered as an incarnation of god. In the days of King Harichander there existed a Pariah (Untouchable) in the burial ground. Selling away one’s wife too was prevalent. To this day these evils are seen in our society. How are we to say that Hindu religion helped the people to progress?

See, what foolish notions are taught to the people by religion. The dead bodies are burnt to ashes and the ashes are immersed in water. But they are believed to be alive. The descendants of the dead hand over rice, dholl, vegetables, foot-wear etc., to a Brahmin to be safely and surely passed over to the dead.

How are we to believe that a man has an iota of sense or rationalism in doing all these. Why should you give things only to Brahmins? Why should you fall at his feet? Why should you wash his feet and drink that water? If this is Hindu doctrine and philosophy, such a religion must go. Take the other rituals. Christening, house warming, marriage, puberty or anything, all are for Brahmin’s gain. Do people of other religions and countries behave like this? We do not respect our knowledge nor are we ashmed of our actions. Are we merely a mass of flesh and bones? Why should anybody get angry when I say all these to make you to think over. Who is responsible for our degradation? Is it religion or government?

ONE GOD OF CHRISTIANS - MUSLIMS

In the scientifically advanced world, we are talking of gods and their great deeds. This is nothing but barbarous. Because our enemies find no reasonable charges against us, they are calling us atheists, with a bad motive and to create mischief.

So far as god is concerned we find the Christians and Muslims, somewhat reformed from the olden days of barbarians. They say that there can be only one god. They say that it is beyond human comprehension. They say that god does good to those who are good and punishes those who are bad. They say that god has no name or shape. They talk of good qualities. We need not worry about their god. Wise people accept their gods because they feel that their god would serve the purpose of creating a better society. What about Hindus and their thousands of gods created by Brahmins.? Why should Hindus worship so many gods? How did they come? See what are all made as gods! From cow, horse, bullock, monkey, bandicoot, stone, birds, metals, paper, all are deemed as gods. When I was in Kasi (Varanasi in North India - a holy town for Hindus), I saw two dogs being worshipped. Moreover gods have wives, concubines, and prostitutes. These gods are believed to eat, sleep and reproduce. They also have marriages and funerals.

Let them attribute anything to these gods. Kidnapping girls, gods enjoying with prostitutes are celebrated as festivals. Crores of rupees are wasted for these. The precious time of the people is wasted. Think over, whether all these are things to be done in the 20th Century.

IDIOTIC MARRIAGES - EXPENSES - OFFERINGS

Should we not feel ashamed of all these? Is it just or right to call us atheists? If there are gods, should they be like this? Will any intelligent man accept this? Does god require all these things we do, as pooja (prayer), offerings, marriages etc.,? Does any god approve all these? Seeing the gods as mere toys, we perform marriage thrice a year to them, why that? If gods really need wives, should we not find out what happened to the wives married last year? Were they divorced? Were they segregated? Have they deserted their husbands and ran away or have all died? Should we not think of all these? Why celebrate marriages every year for gods? Why Music, show, pomp and expenses? Do you know who eats the feast at marriages? How many festivals every year and at various places? What have we gained by all these? So far as our education is concerned 95% people are illiterate. In the world, our India is a very poor country. Should we not think why we should squander money in the name of god?

How many times do we perform poojas (prayers) and place offerings to god a day? How many measures of rice, dholl, and other articles are placed before god? People have no education, no work, no meal. Please consider how many crores of rupees are wasted year after year for celebrating Ekadashi, Arudra, Thai Poosam, Karthgai, and for visiting temples at Tirupathi, Thiruchendur and Rameswaram.

If we consider what pains are taken for these expenses, none could assert that gods have done good to our people in any manner. If the huge amount spent this way is diverted to other fields, we can run the government without taxes. If we create new industries and educational institutions we can solve the problems of illiteracy and unemployment. There will be no exploitation by foreign countries. Just to make a particular section of people (Brahmins) remain lazy and yet lead their lives well, why all others should bestow their hard earned money foolishly for all these?

How senselessly are we behaving in the name of god and devotion? How ugly do we seem when we carry the kavadi (a bent pole with metal vessels at both ends) on our shoulders! Wearing saffron colour cloth people roll in the streets! People shave their head, smear mud and ashes on the body! People prick themselves with small arrows into their tongue and other parts of body. People bathe in dirty water. All these in the name of god and devotion!

Moreover, milk, ghee, curd, honey, fruit, juices are being poured on the stone idols. They flow into gutters. All eatables are wasted. Are we to see this as mere fun? Do all these gods need gold jewels worth crores? Are costly silk garments needed? Why tall towers and big compound walls? Why gold and silver ‘Vimanas’ ? Are they not public property? Does religious duty mean that we should waste money on idols and thus help the lazy Brahmins to loot our money, enabling their people to become Indian Administrative Service (I.A.S) Officers, Judges, State Diwans etc.? If all these are for god’s blessings, should there be such gods? Think over.

Do the Muslims follow this sort of worship of god? Do the Christians do? Will the rationalist Indian accept all these?

MONOPOLY OF BRAHMINS

When are we to get into the right path of devotion to god? When I ask this, the Brahmins dub us as atheists. Believing these Brahmins and their hirelings, the ignorant people raise the cry against us that god is in danger, religion is in danger! Is behaving in this barbarous way, theism or atheism? Whatever it be, we will not be cowed down by their hindering activities. Whatever we feel right, we will boldly say. We say Hindu religion and gods are dreadful diseases. Unless they are effaced out of existence our people cannot and country would not prosper. We say what we feel.

It is for you to think and act. We don’t compel you to believe what all we say as the Brahmins do. They say that if anyone believes god he will go to heaven. If anyone does not believe he will go to hell.

When I left the Congress party in 1925, I realized that our politics was under the monopoly of Brahmins. In the name of struggle for freedom of India it is the Brahmins who played the major role. Their struggle was not for establishing a good government for the people. There was no common cause behind the struggle. I was for crushing the Brahmin monopoly. I realized that god, religion and castes make them strong to exploit others and lead a happy life. I started the Self-Respect Movement myself and enlisted the cooperation of others. Congress pursued a policy of concentrating only on political reform. It neglected the social field. In the name of implementing a constructive programme, the Congress wanted to grab power and establish political domination. While my main aim was social reform and as I was doing my best to eradicate the evils in the name of god, religion, caste, dharma and sastras (Hindu Doctrines), I had to take steps to prevent Brahmin domination in politics.

My public life was multi-faced. My responsibilities increased. I had to swim against the current. My work was in fact a very tough one. If I counter the Brahmins politically, they made a march in the social field. If I countered them in the social field, they cleverly made a march in the political field. I had to arouse the feelings of the innocent Dravidian people in both the fields. I had to face a lot of difficulties in this task.

With all that, there was yet another trouble to me from my own men. Those who have become my followers attained maturity in many matters and gained publicity among the public. They became pawns in the hands of the enemies. Many actually opposed me and my work. I could only say that they did so as Prahaladan or Vibishanan did. After serving the public for 40 years I don’t find any other reason for their acts. It is for the wise people to assess the value of my service in the past 40 years.

WHY DRAVIDIANS DEMAND EQUAL STATUS?

We find Brahmin-Sudra differentiation in temples, shrines, schools, public roads, hotels, etc. Were the high and low discriminations, created by us or by Brahmins? If any one should think over all these, no one will dare to call us communalists.

The Brahmins do not for a moment realise that it is wrong to lower us to disgraceful state and at the same time raising themselves as the highest and respectable. What all we demand is equal status with self respect. But this is considered as a great sin or blunder.

They call it a godly movement or theist movement by safeguarding Aryan doctrines and Varnasharama Dharma (Colour based casteism code), at the same time making others as Sudras and Untouchables. But our Movement which stands for the destruction of Sudra name and untouchability is dubbed as atheists. They say that to talk with us (Dravidians), or to see us is sinful. But they say it is not sinful to fall at their feet. They say it is not sinful to call them ‘Samy’.

They say it is not sinful to see or touch the things to be offered to Brahmins. Nothing should be distributed to us first, they say. They insist that we should take them only after they have touched and tasted. They say we go to heaven by prostrating before them and drinking the water after washing their feet. They tuck the sacred thread they wear in the ear as they pass urine or motion. They say that they escape pollution by this. They will wear the thread only after a bath or when they deem they are pure and clean. Similarly they tuck the thread in the ear when they talk to the Sudras. Is it all non-communalism? We are asked to close our mouth with the hand or anything, when we talk to them. They object to the sound waves touching them.

We can cite thousands of such examples. Yet they, who stand in the way of our progressive life call us communalists and atheists. Many of us forfeit our human rights. Many are afraid of Brahmins. We should deem it a duty to make our people aware of their rights.

Look at what is happening in our politics. The Congress movement, started to get posts for them, was named as a national movement. They (Brahmins) are heaping evils on us as partners. They help the govt., and occupy high posts fetching 1000, 2000, 5000, 10,000 rupees as salary. They live, by supporting the government enjoying its favour, to grab high positions in the courts and educational institutions.

When we aspire for any of these, the Brahmins say that we are not fit. When we want to get ourselves made fit, they say we are unpatriotic and communalistic.

So it is absolutely desirable to have a separate Movement for us. Only then we will be able to solve our problems. We need a Movement to face our difficulties. We need a Movement to find a solution to our problems. We should gain freedom with self-respect. We should all come together and work hard in the Movement. Everyone should play his part in the Movement.

[Quelle: COLLECTED WORKS OF PERIYAR E.V.R. (thesatyashodhak.com). -- Fair use]

"The Self-Respect movement, however, directed its appeal primarily to the socially and economically backward non-Brahman communities which were low in the Tamil ritual status, including the scheduled castes, the Vanniyakula Kshatriyas, the Nadars, the Agamudaiyars and the Isai Vellalars, whose sordid social condition the Self-Respecters brought to the notice of the government in their speeches and writings. Likewise they espoused the cause of the niggardly paid agricultural labourers and unskilled workers, mainly drawn from scheduled castes in rural and urban areas respectively. Thus the Self-Respect movement publicized the social and economic discontent among the backward communities and at the same time enlisted their massive support. Consequently from its inception it assumed the character of a mass movement, though its leaders and its chief propagandists came largely from the Vellala and the Balija Naidu communities."

[Quelle: E. Sa. Visswanathan: The political career of E. V. Ramasami Naicker : A study in the politics of Tamilnad 1920 - 1949. -- Thesis: Canberra : Australian National University, 1973. -- S. 88f. -- Online: https://openresearch-repository.anu.edu.au/handle/1885/112063?mode=full. -- Fair use]

1925

M. S. Purnalingam Pillai (Tamil மு. சி. பூரணலிங்கம் பிள்ளை - Mu. Ci. Pūraṇaliṅkam Piḷḷai, 1866 - 1947) im Vorwort zu பழந்தமிழ் - Paḻantamiḻ von A. Sivaprakasar:

"As M.S. Purnalingam Pillai (1866-1947) observed in 1925, the failure to recognize Tamil’s primordiality, anteriority, and antiquity had allowed Sanskrit to rule the pedagogical and political roost as India’s most ancient and classical language.

“It is high time for the reformed Madras University to disabuse itself of this unfortunate prepossession [sic] and to recognize the ancientness of the Tamil language and literature in the light of what Strabo, Ptolemy and Pliny, and Periplus have said about the Lost Lemuria or Tamilakam [தமிழகம்] as the cradle of the human race.”

Here, once again, the Tamil placemaker ran up against the fact that whereas Sanskrit could offer empirical proof of its ancient works as testimony to its classicality, Tamil’s even more ancient and glorious wealth had been plundered by “the cruel sea,” and lost forever."

[Quelle: Sumathi Ramaswamy [சுமதி ராமஸ்வாமி]: The lost land of Lemuria : Fabulous geographies, catastrophic histories. -- Berkeley : Univ. of California Pr., 2004. -- 334 S. : Ill. -- S. 118f. -- Fair use]

1925-01

Kallidaikurichi (Tamil கல்லிடைக்குறிச்சி): Gurukula-Konflikt

"Still another affair in which Ramaswami Naicker became involved was the issue of separate dining which was enforced for Brahman and non-Brahman students at a traditional school or Gurukulam in the famous Brahman village of Kallidaikurchi in Tinnevelly district. As a center of Brahman culture and learning Kallidaikurchi had a tradition of conflict with the non-Brahmans of the area dating back at least to 1917, when the Justice Party took exception to Taluq Board funds being spent on the Sanskrit College at Kallidaikurchi. Only a few non-Brahmans were permitted to enter the school, and they were not allowed to study the Vedas. The Gurukulam, which was actually at Shermadevi, a little to the south of Kallidaikurchi, was established in December, 1922, by V. V. S. Aiyer, a former terrorist and editor (1920—1922) of the Tamil newspaper Desabhaktan. Most of its financial support came from private individuals such as the Nattukottai Chettis in India and Burma, and from a number of organizations. The Tamil Nad Congress Committee gave Rs. 5,000 to the Gurukulam at the time of its establishment.

In January, 1925, reports that non-Brahmans at the Gurukulam were forced to eat apart from the Brahmans came to the attention of Ramaswami Naicker and P. Varadarajulu Naidu (both Balija Naidus). A committee from the T.N.C.C. [Tamil Nadu Congress Committee] was thereupon appointed to look into the matter, and in April Varadarajulu Naidu began an all-out campaign not only against the Gurukulam but also against what he considered to be Brahman domination within the Congress. He told a public audience at Salem that before the Tamils sought equality with foreigners they should

“establish complete equality with the Brahmins in the matter of inter-dining and save the Non-Brahmins from the age-long social injustice that had been meted out to them by the Brahmins . . . V. V. S. Ayyar’s action in not allowing Non-Brahmin boys to eat with the Brahmins [was] a direct challenge to the Non-Brahmins, and . . . this was the time for the Tamilians to vindicate their honour.” 

Two weeks later Varadarajulu Naidu indirectly caused a minor riot when he spoke at a meeting in Mayavaram, in Tanjore district. While the meeting was in progress a rumor was circulated that a Brahman who had been heckling Varadarajulu Naidu during his speech had been forcibly ejected by some non-Brahmans. The ensuing melee was so wild that the meeting broke up in confusion. When the T.N.C.C. met at Trichinopoly Trichinopoly, Varadarajulu Naidu used his influence as president to limit the agenda almost exclusively to a discussion of the Brahman-non-Brahman question. In the event, a compromise resolution was agreed on by which the Committee recommended that all organizations partaking in the national movement should follow a principle shunning gradations of merit based on birth. Ramaswami Naicker agreed with the resolution, adding that if the country was not yet prepared to accept this state of things, it was the duty of the non-Brahmans to create public opinion which was receptive to their rights.

Almost simultaneously, as a direct result of non-Brahman pressure, V. V. S. Aiyer resigned as head of the Gurukulam. Even with this victory, Varadarajulu Naidu thought seriously of leaving Congress as a protest against Brahmans in the Tamil Nad organization. A non-Brahman lawyer more or less summed up the feeling when he wrote to the Hindu (Apr. 19,1925):

 “Mahatama Gandhi wanted this year to be a ‘spinning year,’ but Dr. Naidu is making it a ‘non-Brahman year.’ ”

[Quelle: Eugene F. Irschick: Politics and social conflict in South India : The non-Brahman Movement and Tamil Separatism, 1916-1929. -- Bombay : Oxford University Press,1969. -- S. 269ff. -- Online: Politics And Social Conflict In South India : Eugene F. Irschick : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive. -- Fair use]

1925-05-02

Es erscheint die Tamil Wochenzeitschrift

குடி அரசு - Kuṭi aracu  = Kudi-Arasu / hrsg. von Periyar_E._V._Ramasamy (Tamil ஈரோடு வெங்கடப்பா இராமசாமி, 1879 - 1973)


Abb.: Titelblatt 1939-09-03
Schlagzeile: வீழ்க இந்தி! - Vīḻka inti! = Hindi, falle!
[Public domain]

"In November 1925, Periyar_E._V._Ramasamy walked out of the Tamilnadu Congress Provincial Conference at Kancheepuram, unable to see through his resolution on proportionate communal representation (caste-based reservations). This event is seen as the founding moment of the non-Brahmin movement in Tamilnadu. Following this, Periyar launched a strident and uninhibited campaign for social justice through communal representation, and a vehement attack on Brahminism, which stalled its attainment. Kudi Arasu, the weekly started by him some months before his walkout, was the primary vehicle of his ideas. By mid-1927 there was a gradual shift in the content of Periyar’s campaign, which was reflected in the pages of Kudi Arasu. The attack on Brahminism and the championing of reservations quickly grew into a radical critique of caste and religion. The itihasams and puranams were critiqued from a rationalist viewpoint and condemned as irrational and inimical to morals and social justice. The Ramayanam turned out to be one of the first targets of this campaign. E.M. Subramania Pillai, a Saivite scholar, writing under the pseudonym of Chandrasekara Pavalar, began a serial on the ‘obscenities of the Ramayanam’ in Kudi Arasu. Gradually, this attack on religion began encompassing Saivism also. Saivite texts like Periya Puranam and Thiruvilaiyadal Puranam, and Saivite saints like Thirugnanasambandar Thirugnanasambandar, were brought under rationalist scrutiny. In a series of essays on the venerated Periya Puranam published in Kudi Arasu, one Meikandar proclaimed,

‘Periya Puranam creates caste conflicts; Periya Puranam advocates caste differences; Periya Puranam portrays many acts inimical to one’s self-respect as devotion to God; Periya Puranam justifies murderous deeds as service to Saivism.’

The Saivites initially encountered this attack on Saivism and its apostles by the Self-respect Movement with shock, disbelief and dismay. This was because the Self-respect Movement was generally perceived by the Saivites, as a movement started

‘to counter the harm done by the Brahmins to the Tamil people’.

The Saivites had for long seen the non-brahmin movement as an organisation to champion their cause and protect their interests, if not actually launched and run by themselves. In the initial stages of the conflict, this was emphasised again and again, and a compromise was sought on this ground. As Ilavalaganar, a student of Maraimalai Adigal, wrote:

Saivism is not one iota different from the primary aim of the Self-Respect movement. The Self-Respect movement arose to dispel the illusion of Brahminism from the Tamil people and infuse self-respect into them. Saivism also does the same. The Self-Respect movement detests the Aryan Brahmins. Saivism too doesn’t like the Aryan Brahmins one bit. . . . The Self-Respect movement wishes to uplift the depressed classes. That is also the basic idea of Saivism....The Self-Respect movement is against caste differences among the Tamil people. Saivism too emphasises the same point... when there are so many commonalities, why should Saivism and Saivite apostles be deprecated and condemned?

It was also argued that the non-Brahmin movement drew much from the Saivite intellectuals. Maraimalai Adigal actually claimed that the Self-respect Movement came into being by adopting his views and principles. The editor of Siddhantam, M. Balasubramania Mudaliar, went one step further when he said,

‘The best parts of the Self-respect Movement are nothing but alms thrown by Maraimalai Adigal, the spiritual father’ and cursed them that, ‘If they who got these alms and campaigned based on it, are thankless to the spiritual father, all their efforts will go waste. . . '

The most strident anti-Self-Respect views were expressed in Sivanesan, a Saivite journal published from the Chettinadu region, which published a series of articles right from early 1928 condemning both the reforms and radical change expounded by the Self-respect Movement."

[Quelle: A. R. Venkatachalapathy [Tamil ஆ. இரா. வேங்கடாசலபதி): In Those Days There Was No Coffee: Writings in Cultural History,  -- New Delhi : Yoda, 2006. -- Kindle ed. -- Fair use]

1925-06-03

Agasthiyar Falls (Tamil அகத்தியர் அருவி): V. V. S. Aiyar (Tamil வ. வே. சுப்பிரமணிய ஐயர் - Va. Vē. Cuppiramaṇiya Aiyar, 1881 - 1925), Brahmane, ertrinkt beim Versuch , seine Tochter zu retten.


Abb.: V. V. S. Aiyar
[Public domain]

Varahaneri Venkatesa Subramaniam Aiyar
Born 2 April 1881
 

TrichinopolyMadras PresidencyIndia

Died 3 June 1925 (aged 44)
 

Papanasam Falls, Madras PresidencyIndia

Cause of death Drowned in Papanasam Falls under mysterious circumstances
Nationality Indian
Other names V. V. S. Aiyar
Education Lincoln's InnLondon
Known for Indian Independence MovementIndia Houseliterary works


 

"Another enthusiast whose devotion became suspect was V. V. Subramania Aiyar, editor briefly of the nationalist newspaper, the Tecapaktan [தேசபக்தன் - Patriot] (1920-21). In 1922, with the help of funds from the Congress and private patrons, Subramanian established a residential Tamil school (tamilk kurukulam [தமிழ் குருகுலம்]) first at Kallidaikurichi and then at Sheramadevi (in Tirunelveli) for the purpose of teaching students in Tamil, following the principles of the national education scheme. His intention, he explained in a 1924 editorial in the journal Pala Parati that he launched from the school, was

“to restore Tamil to its natural state of unrivalled preeminence.” 

He planned to do this by teaching students not only ancient arts and sciences but modern ones as well, and by imparting to them the spirit of social service. Subramanian himself resigned from the management of the school in 1925 after a scandal erupted when it was learned that Brahman students were fed separately. Soon after, he died in an accident while trying to save his young daughter from drowning (Visswanathan 1983: 45-55).

Subramanian did not start out as a Tamil devotee; on the contrary, he first made a name for himself as a nationalist who advocated violence as the principal means to secure freedom from colonial rule. Born in a small village near Tiruchirappalli in 1881, he went on to get a B.A. in history, economics, and Latin from Madras University. He worked for a few years as a lawyer in Tiruchirapalli and in Rangoon before going to London in 1907 to study for a law degree. There, he linked up with V. D. Savarkar and, over the next three years, got drawn into the circle of militant nationalists around him. On his return to India in 1910, he went to Pondicherry, where he met Subramania Bharati  and became part of the poet’s circle. Subramanian’s devotional activities included an English translation of the Tirukkural in 1915 and the establishment of a Tamil publishing house in 1916 (Mani 1993). In a number of essays on Tamil he published beginning in 1914, he took an Indianist stance on the language; in 1924, he even insisted (to the ire of many fellow devotees) that for its replenishment and modernization, Tamil should turn to Sanskrit, “the great treasure house.” He pointed out that hostility towards Sanskrit was misplaced when even the earliest works of Tamil literature had so many words of Sanskritic origin (Subramania Aiyar 1981; Mani 1993: 116). His own Tamil was highly Sanskritic, and drew criticism even from someone like Kalyanasundaram, a fellow Indianist. Another of its devotees sarcastically asked how Subramania Aiyar could claim to restore Tamil to its “natural state of unrivalled preeminence” if his own speech was so inflected with Sanskrit (Mani 1993: 187-88).

The 1925 scandal over the Sheramadevi Tamil school, which led to Subramania Aiyar’s earlier record as a “militant nationalist” being overshadowed by his putative Brahmanness, was soon followed by attacks on other Brahman adherents of Tamil. In 1926, Ramasami published an essay in his Kuti Aracu [குடி அரசு] in which he ridiculed his fellow “non-Brahmans” who had established the prestigious Madurai Tamil Sangam only to have that association hijacked by Brahmans and their Sanskritized Tamil (E. V. Ramasami 1985: 82-83)."

[Quelle: Sumathi Ramaswamy [சுமதி ராமஸ்வாமி]: Passions of tongue : Language devotion in Tamil India 1891 - 1970. -- Berkeley : Univ. of California Pr., 1997. -- S. 196f. -- Fair use]

1927

Munnirpallam (tamil  முன்னீர்பள்ளம்) : Es erscheint:

M. S. Purnalingam Pillai (Tamil மு. சி. பூரணலிங்கம் பிள்ளை - Mu. Ci. Pūraṇaliṅkam Piḷḷai, 1866 - 1947): Tamil India. -- Munnirpallam, 1927. -- 200 S. -- Online: TAMIL INDIA : Purnalingam Pillai, M. S. : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

"ADDENDUM

Western Scholars have evolved a theory which traces the origin of Indian civilisation and of the Aryan race to Central Asia. Everybody acquiesces in this theory, and therefore everybody believes it. Let us consider it a moment.

One would expect that when the history of a people was in question, the traditions and literature of that people would be the first sources of information on the subject sought. But though you have the oldest civilisation and literature in the world, and records which purport to recite your history for many hundreds of thousands of years, the orientalists do not pay you this compliment. Your books do not anywhere mention or suggest any other dwelling place for Indians than India. Their evidence is unanimously and distinctly to the contrary. For instance, Rama flourished in India and conquered Ceylon in Treta-yuga, not far from a million years ago. But the orientalists do not vouchsafe your books or your traditions the slightest consideration. They proceed to construct a theory of their own, which they introduce by remarks of this kind - I quote from one of their principal books, Muir’s Sanskrit Texts [Original Sanskrit texts on the origin and progress of the religion and institutions of India; collected, tr. into English, and illustrated by notes. Chiefly for the use of students and others in India].

“I must begin,” says this scholar, “within a candid admission that, so far as I know, none of the Sanskrit books, not even the most ancient, contains any distinct reference to the foreign origin of the Indians."

The theory is that the Aryans came to India from Central Asia. At first 1000 years or so B.C. was considered early enough for this migration. Now, I believe, they have gotten the date back 5000 or 6000 years earlier than that.

On what do they base this theory ? I will give you samples of their principal arguments, and beg you to note well their character.

They are many names in the Rig Veda, some of which are thought to denote Indian rivers. Now, they say, the Ganges is mentioned in the Rig Veda but once, and towards the end. But the Indus or Sindu, is mentioned early and often. This shows that your ancestors during most of the time of the composition of the Rig Veda hymns, were dwelling near the Indus, that is in the Punjab and Afghanistan, and did not reach the Ganges until the late rhymes were composed.

Very good, but when we look into the meaning of ‘Sindhu’, what do we find ? First, that it is a name of Chandra, the presiding devata of the moon. Second, that it is a name for the ocean. Third, that it is used to denote any great confluence of waters, and finally, (Sankaracharya in the Bashya-Hridaya) that it is another name for the Ganges itself. Having adopted the theory, the Orientalists proceed to build it up interpreting everything to support it. For instance, the Rig Veda mentions the ‘Sarayu’. There is a river of that name on Oudh, falling into the Ganges below Benares. This river is far too south to fit their theory. So they say  I quote one of their leading men, Lassen -

“Perhaps it is an affluent of the Sarasvati (a river of the Punjab); in any case, it is to be distinguished from the well-known affluent of the Ganges. ”

Then as to writing. Their theory required them to make you illiterate in ancient times, for otherwise how can the silence of your literature on this important subject be explained? Your books must be more recent than these events, if the theory is to stand.

“An illiterate people,” says A.W. Von Schlegal [August Wilhelm Schlegel], “ignorant of writing, which has adopted a stationary home after long and arduous migration, might, after a few centuries, easily lose all recollection of its change of habitation.”

So they say that, in as much as they can find no proof to the contrary, your ancestors could not write more than 2300 or 2400 years ago. But they cannot deny that you were a great people, with abundant commerce. Megasthenes shows that even Solomon got merchandise from India. How was your business conducted without writing ? Because no records are found, is a very slender basis on which to deny the knowledge of writing to a great, civilised and commercial people.

The examples I have given are sufficient to illustrate the flimsiness of the arguments of the Orientalists. These theories are the merest and most random speculations, and impudent speculations at that. (From a lecture delivered by Mr. Myron H. Phelps, B.A., LL.B. of New York, at the Hindu College, Jaffna, on Feb. 28, 1910)."

[a.a.O., S. 129ff]

1917

Madras (Tamil மதராஸ்): Madras Mail zu Thani Tamil Iyakkam (Tamil தனித் தமிழ் இயக்கம்) (Pure or Independent Tamil Movement)

"A shortsighted nationalism compels such folk to strive to keep all immigrant words out. . .. Fortunately such purists do not control the growth of a language. That is the work of the common people. The purists may frown at slang, they may grumble that the language is being debased by slipshod and lazy talkers and writers, but fifty per cent of what they condemn eventually finds its way into the language, to be defended by a later generation of purists as violently as the earlier fought for its exclusion. Language cannot be successfully cribbed, cabined and confined."
(quoted in Nambi Arooran 1976: 341-42.)

[Quelle: Sumathi Ramaswamy [சுமதி ராமஸ்வாமி]: Passions of tongue : Language devotion in Tamil India 1891 - 1970. -- Berkeley : Univ. of California Pr., 1997. -- S. 147. -- Fair use]

1928-07-22 ff.

Madras (Tamil மதராஸ்): Kontroverse von  Maraimalai_Adigal  (1876 - 1950) und Periyar E. V. Ramasamy (Tamil ஈ. வெ. இராமசாமி, 1879 - 1973)

"Maraimalai Adigal and the Self-Respect Movement

That Maraimalai Adigal was the first to respond to the challenge posed by the Self-respect Movement is hardly surprising. Born as R.S. Vedachalam in Nagapattinam, he had his early education in Tamil and Saiva Siddhantam, and was known for his erudition. Somasundara Nayagar, well-known for his tirades against Vaishnavism and Vedantam, further educated him in Saiva Siddhantam. Adigal launched the Annual Saiva Siddhanta Conferences in 1906 and occupied an eminent place in the Saivite intellectual world. Well-known for his Pure Tamil Movement and his literary and philosophical treatises, he was a highly rated and widely respected scholar.

From Adigal’s diaries of this period, it is clear that the Self-Respect Movement occupied his mind. He seems to have discussed the criticism launched against Saivism with anybody who visited him in his house at Pallavaram, then a little village outside Madras. He thought of ways and means to counter the ‘destructive movement’ and the ‘atheistic vomittings’ of Periyar. He asked Ulaganatha Mudaliar, the brother of Thiru. V. Kalyanasundara Mudaliar, another eminent Saivite scholar, to arrange for a presidency-wide lecture tour to counter the propaganda of the Self-respect Movement. Here it is interesting to note why, in Adigal’s view, the Self-respect Movement singled out Saivism for attack. He considered the movement to be the

‘mischief of Vaishnavites’!

The leader of the Self-Respect movement is a Vaishnavite; his brother too, we come to understand, is a Vaishnavite who has converted many gullible Saivites to Vaishnavism. Their accomplices too are Vaishnavites. Some of the Justice party leaders too are Vaishnavites. Moreover, not only are they Vaishnavites, they are also Telugu-speakers.’

Thus, Maraimalai Adigal could not, at least initially, comprehend the far-reaching objectives and the significance of the Self-respect Movement, and was only able to come to terms with it from a very sectarian perspective. But not all Saivites were like him. Probably, this was why Thiru. Vi. Ka. [Thiru._V._Kalyanasundaram] refused to publish Adigal’s essay ‘Saivamum Suyamariyathai Iyakkamum’ [சைவமும் சுயமரியாதை இயக்கமும்] (Saivism and the Selfrespect Movement), which articulated these views, in his Navasakti [நவசக்தி]. Adigal had to resort to the orthodox Sivanesan [சிவநேசன்] to get through his views.

Matters came to a head on 22 July 1928. Maraimalai Adigal presided over the annual celebrations of the Sri Balasubramania Baktha Janasabhai at Royapettai, Madras, a leading Saivite association that boasted of Thiru. Vi. Ka., his brother and M. Balasubramania Mudaliar, the editor of Siddhantam [சித்தாந்தம்] as active members among others. In this meeting, Adigal

 ‘condemned vehemently the atheistic doctrines of Mr. Ramasamy Naicker [Periyar] and the mischief of his Suyamariyathai [Self-respect] Movement’. 

During the course of his lecture, N. Dandapani Pillai, a Self-Respect activist and J.S. Kannappar, incidentally a Dalit student of Maraimalai Adigal and a member of the editorial board of Dravidan [திராவிடன்] (the official Tamil daily of the Justice party), raised questions about the persecution of Jains by the seventh-century Saivite saint Thirugnanasambandar. Consequently, pandemonium broke out, and the meeting ended in confusion.

There were conflicting reports on what actually transpired in the meeting-hall. Maraimalai Adigal wrote in his diary that he

'answered [Dandapani Pillai’s] questions tellingly and showed that there was no[t] a particle of evidence to prove the Jains were persecuted by St. Gnanasambanda. My answers satisfied Dandapani Pillai and the audience and Mr. Pillai, at the end of the speech, thanked me heartily and left the place.’ 

This version was reiterated in the pamphlet issued by his supporters and disciples, ‘Dravidanin Poimai Nandantha Vannam Uraithal’ ட்ராவிடனின் பொய்மை நண்டாந்த வண்ணம் உரைத்தல்] (A true account of Dravidan's falsehood). But the Self-respect papers gave an entirely different version of the events. Kudi Arasu [குடி அரசு] alleged that Maraimalai Adigal instigated the audience to murder Periyar and that, when Dandapani Pillai and Kannappar raised questions, Adigal broke into tears, unable to refute them.

A virtual print-war broke out between the two sides and serious charges were traded. The Balasubramania Baktha Janasabhai issued a series of pamphlets in defence of Adigal and refuted

‘the calumnies heaped by the Self-respecters on the Saivite religion and its apostles.’

In the Kudi Arasu too, there were editorials and articles attacking Maraimalai Adigal. Kaivalya Swamiyar, wrote a particularly hard-hitting piece, insinuating that Adigal, while propagating Saivism, actually ate meat on the sly. He further added,

‘Swami Vedachalam [Maraimalai Adigal] is no apostle born to establish religion. Nor is he a prophet. He is but a tutor who teaches for a mere >24 wage.'

Maraimalai Adigal was so infuriated that he met K. Subramania Pillai, a very eminent Saivite scholar and active in the Justice Party, at his home in Egmore in Madras, and

‘warned him of the Justice Party; told him plainly that he must not put faith in the support of that and asked him to practise as a vakil...’. 

He was so incensed about

‘the brute followers of Suyamariyathai Movement [who] continuously criticise me with rancour and indiscrimination’,

that he even contemplated sending a letter to the police authorities about their mischief.

Finally, in order to defuse the situation, Thiru. Vi. Ka., and K. A. P. Viswanatham, a Saivite and an active member of the Justice Party, met Maraimalai Adigal at Pallavaram and attempted a reconciliation. They requested him to write ‘a letter in a friendly tone’, to which Adigal readily complied.

Dear Sir,—I am fine. Let me know of your well being. I understand from [K.A.P] Viswanatha Pillai of Tiruchi that there is a note about me in Kudi Arasu. I am given to understand that it was written based on the reports of Dravidan and Tamilnadu on the annual celebrations at Chennai Guhananda Nilayam. I’ve neither wished nor uttered a word that either you or the friends of your movement may come to harm. Don’t mistake me and bear any grudge. However, I am not in agreement with your views regarding God and the apostles. Please do not get offended by some of the reports in the press. May your attempts for the upliftment of the Tamil people succeed!—S. Vedachalam, 24-8-1928.

But the matter did not end there. As the letter was ‘wrongly distributed’ by K.A.P. Viswanatham, the Dravidan published it as an apology rendered by Maraimalai Adigal to Periyar. Following this, Periyar wrote a long editorial in his Kudi Arasu. The editorial is of interest, not only for the magnanimity of Periyar, but also for the light it throws on the basis of the reconciliation. Periyar, in his writeup, emphasised that he had demanded an apology only for putting an end to the whole controversy. He not only accepted full responsibility for Dravidan's unwarranted disclosure of the letter but also offered an unconditional apology to Adigal. Only then did he publish Adigal’s letter. However, he stood steadfast in his principles and said,

‘But regarding the difference of opinion, how much ever [Maraimalai Adigal] is willing to compromise, we will not budge an inch from our views and principles, either for the sake of his or anybody else’s friendship.’

Why then did Periyar accept the reconciliation?

‘Right from the time we came to know of [Maraimalai Adigal], a sort of inexplicable attachment grew. Whenever we discussed about him with our friends, it emerged that he was a close confidante and a source of strength to all our aspirations and principles.’

Thus, it was only on a broad non-Brahmin platform that reconciliation was struck. Nothing else was yielded, as both stuck to their guns. As a sign of the reconciliation, Maraimalai Adigal began a serial on the Ramayanam in the Self-respect English weekly, the Revolt."

[Quelle: A. R. Venkatachalapathy [Tamil ஆ. இரா. வேங்கடாசலபதி): In Those Days There Was No Coffee: Writings in Cultural History,  -- New Delhi : Yoda, 2006. -- Kindle ed. -- Fair use]

1928-11-07

Es erscheint die englisschprachige Zeitschrift des Self-Respect Movement:

Revolt / hrsg. von  S. Ramanathan (Tamil எஸ். இராமநாதன் - Es. Irāmanātaṉ,, 1895 - 1970) und E. V. Ramasamy (Tamil ஈ. வெ. இராமசாமி, 1879 - 1973)

"Through this English paper, Ramanathan tried to enlarge the scope and activities of the Self-Respect movement in the presidency. But he was unsuccessful because the number of readers was small and the few sympathetic ones were frightened off by the tone and content. Gurusami’s [Kuthoosi Gurusamy - குத்தூசி குருசாமி, 1906 - 1965] articles on the epics, most of them on the Ramayana, were characteristic examples to judge the paper. His aim in writing those articles was to draw aside the veil of sanctity attached to the epics which gave them a mystic influence over men’s minds and to show the epic characters’ sexual perversities and despicable qualities which were detestable to the moral standards of the Tamils. When the first article was published the readers were shocked by its interpretation of the story of the Ramayana because it questioned the infallible qualities of the epic characters. Readers wrote several letters to the editors, protesting against the ignoble treatment of the theme and questioning the motive of the paper in drawing attention to the ugly features of the epic. Some readers argued that the Ramayana should be read only as a form of literature and a work of art portraying human virtues and weaknesses and that to take it as literal history would be twisting the aim of the author, Valmiki. Gurusami replied in an article of 5 December 1928:

Our object in publishing the series of articles... on the Ithihasas, is to encourage a study of the ancient literature of our country with a critical mind ... our contention is that the Ramayana is valuable only as reflecting the mentality of the people who wrote those stories. The Ithihasas are not to be relied on as accurate chronicles of events nor should they be taken as portraying human virtues that hold good for all time. The Ramayana is neither a history of ancient times nor a book of morals applicable to our times.

Articles of a controversial nature continued to be published, ignoring the protests and the feelings of the reading public. So the paper lost support.

As a result its circulation was limited to a few thousand and its influence was mainly upon the radical section of the student population."

[Quelle: E. Sa. Visswanathan: The political career of E. V. Ramasami Naicker : A study in the politics of Tamilnad 1920 - 1949. -- Thesis: Canberra : Australian National University, 1973. -- S. 91ff. -- Online: https://openresearch-repository.anu.edu.au/handle/1885/112063?mode=full. -- Fair use]

1929 - 1932

E. V. Ramasamy (Tamil ஈ. வெ. இராமசாமி, 1879 - 1973) und S. Ramanatha Pillai (Tamil எஸ். ராமநாத பிள்ளை, 1895 - 1968) besuchen

1929-03-29/31

Tinnevelly (Tamil திருநெல்வேலி): Saivapperiyar Thanikkotam (The Special Conference of Saivite Scholars)

"The continued attack on Saivism by the Self-respecters impelled the Saivites to adopt fire-fighting tactics. In an ‘Appeal to the Saivite People, Saivite Mutts and Saivite Associations’, dated 25 September 1928, the Then India Saiva Siddhanta Sangam of Tirunelveli (run by V. Thiruvarangam Pillai and his brother V. Subbiah Pillai, the founders of the Saiva Siddhanta Works Publishing Society) called for urgent action. It called for extended lecture tours of Saivite propagandists, the publication of pamphlets, the establishment of Saivite schools and more importantly the organising of a Saivite Conference. Out of this was born the ‘Saivapperiyar Thanikkootam’ (The Special Conference of Saivite Scholars) which played a crucial role in the struggle between the Saivites and the Self-respect Movement.

S. Sachidanandam Pillai, a respected Saivite scholar, was the first to respond to this appeal. In a lengthy personal communication to V. Thiruvarangam Pillai, he discussed matters at length. He conceded that

‘Kudi Arasu [குடி அரசு] and Dravidan [திராவிடன்] were first launched with the lofty ideal of improving the lot of the Tamil people in the political, public and social life. With the confused idea of freeing the Tamils from the conspiracy of Brahmins as their objective’,

they had now rejected religion as a whole. Blaming the Self-respect leaders of ignorance in religious matters, he also added that in the present state of affairs, there was indeed some decadence in the state of religion. He wrote:

In this context, it is my view that before condemning the unwarranted trespasses of Kudi Arasu and Dravidan, we must call a meeting of scholars of Saivite and Vaishnavite Tamil people, who are well-versed in the arts, religious texts, worldly matters, and ancient religion and culture. The meeting should not be a big conference which falls into the vile net of the press, but held, separately. The resolutions alone may be made public. Only then should we consider condemning the above journals. I am of the view that we should guide them along the right path and not try to finish them off. It is expedient to invite the editor of Kudi Arasu to the meeting and arrange for a dialogue.

Sachidanandam Pillai’s views were the result of much serious thought and contemplation. Resolutions were passed in the Balasubramania Baktha Janasabhai in December 1928 and Then India Saiva Siddhanta Sangam in January 1929 calling for the Special Conference of Saivite Scholars. The moderation and sobriety of Sachidanandam Pillai were evident in the planning of the Conference. But the Self-Respect Conference held on 17-18 February 1929 at Kancheepuram, came as the last straw, and any hopes of dialogue or compromise were dashed. In this historic conference, many radical speeches and resolutions were made. Two of the resolutions that evoked hysterical reactions among the Saivites were the ones regarding the dropping of caste surnames, and the condemnation of sporting religious marks on the forehead.

These resolutions gave a sense of urgency to the Saivites and the arrangements for the Special Conference were hastened. Sachidanandam Pillai set the tone of the conference with a questionnaire titled

'Saivapperiyar Thanikkoottathin Avasiyamum Velaiyum’ (The Need for and the Functions of the Special Conference of Saivite Scholars).

This was carried in all the important Saivite journals, with an appeal for the considered response of all concerned Saivites.

The statement began with the preamble:

Confusion now looms large in the society and religious life of Tamilnadu. As the social formation and religion appear to be inextricably tied to one another, social reformers argue that religion is the cause of all social hardships, and are going about condemning religion and working hard against it.

Then it proceeded to ask the following questions:

  1. Is religion essential for culture and morality?

  2. If yes, what is the nature of religious life?

  3. What sort of religion is required in this century?

  4. Can Saivism be that religion?

  5. What are the cardinal principles and practices of Saivism?

The list extended to about twentyfive questions. Clearly, the Self-respect challenge had rattled the Saivites: they were now being forced to introspect and raise very basic questions. The Self-respecters responded to this with counter-questions, reiterating their position.

Consequently, the Special Conference evoked great interest and the outcome was eagerly awaited. It also brought to the fore the various strands within the Saivites and much debate went on about them. Three predominant divisions could be discerned among the Saivites.

  • The first was the orthodox group, consisting of scholars such as P. Muthaiah Pillai and Swaminatha Pandithar, who were for fundamentals, and opposed all change. Sivanesan  [சிவநேசன்] was their mouthpiece.
     

  • The dominant strand was that of the moderates which included Maraimalai Adigal, Thiru. Vi. Ka. [Thiru._V._Kalyanasundaram], Sachidanandam Pillai, M. Balasubramania Mudaliar and others. Their aim was to accept some amount of reforms and overhaul Saivism according to the needs of changing times, and silence criticism from without, especially the Self-respect Movement. They wielded considerable influence over the Saivite fold and ran major journals like Navasakti, Sentamil Selvi and Siddhantam.
     

  • Last came the reformists, a motley crowd consisting of S. Murugappa, V. O. Chidambaram Pillai, P. Chidambaram Pillai, P. Thirukoodasundaram Pillai, K. M. Balasubramaniam and others.

The Special Conference was held between 29 and 31 March 1929 at Tirunelveli. Over ninety scholars representing over thirty-five Saivite organisations were present. The Conference was bogged down in controversy right from the beginning. There was widespread accusation that the organisers had sent invitations and entry forms only to their trusted men. In fact, P. Thirukoodasundaram Pillai was at first even denied entry into the Conference hall. He further complained that the Conference resolutions were all passed only in the Subjects Committee and not debated in the general meeting.

The strength of the moderates was only too evident as all the resolutions reflected their preponderance. The Conference resolved that religion was indispensable for morality and righteous living, and that Saivism was a rational religion suited to all times and all social formations. But it cannot be denied that the propaganda of the Self-respecters too had its impact. Some forward-looking resolutions like the abolition of dedication of devadasis to Saivite temples, the elimination of obscene images from temples, and the nominal equality of all devotees within the precincts of the temple were carried out.

The other sections of the Saivite fold could not push forward their views. The orthodox Saivites were totally sidelined, and as the Self-respecters themselves admitted, the Conference

 ‘was tactful enough to steer clear of the shoals and shallows of orthodox Saivism’. 

P. Muthaiah Pillai opposed the resolutions regarding the equality of all inside the temple. He argued that ‘the base classes’ who indulge in drink and such other vices had no business inside the temples. He further elaborated his views in a particularly obscurantist article titled ‘Poruthamatra Theermanangal’ (Irrelevant Resolutions).

On the other hand, the reformists fared even worse, and as the Revolt observed, a three months’ fuss had ended only in a lot of smoke. Scholars like K. M. Balasubramaniam, S. Murugappa and P. Chidambaram Pillai, for whatever reason, did not even turn up at the Conference. The reformists put up a weak presence in the form of V. O. Chidambaram Pillai and P. Thirukoodasundaram Pillai, and it is not even clear what they actually did. Kumaran [குமரன்] reported,

‘V.O. Chidambaram Pillai elaborated on some of the ways to reform Saivism. As most of the delegates did not agree to his views, Mr. Pillai walked out of the Subjects Committee.’ 

Kudi Arasu [குடி அரசு], probably exaggerating, wrote,

‘It appears that V.O. Chidambaram Pillai and P. Thirukoodasundaram Pillai were not permitted to attend the Special Committee. Then V.O. Chidambaram Pillai walked out saying that, ‘instead of even outsiders getting drawn towards Saivism, the outcome of the Conference was that some actually left the fold of Saivism’.

Though the Saivite journals maintained silence over this affair in the beginning, later they came out with their version. M. Balasubramania

Mudaliar said that V.O. Chidambaram Pillai was present during the entire course of the Subjects Committee and that he signed the minutes and posed for the photograph in the end; further he had even argued that sporting sacred ash was not an indispensable Saivite practice. In keeping with his view, the Subjects Committee had defined the practice (anuttanam [அனுஷ்டானம்]) as a ‘general practice’.

Of Thirukoodasundaram Pillai, we have mentioned earlier. In the beginning he was not permitted into the Conference Hall. He also criticised the formal passing of resolutions at the general meeting without any debate. A Gandhian nationalist, he had no connection with the Self-respect Movement as such. But, as he had a zeal for reform, he participated in the Conference. As the Self-respect journals wrote of his activities with approval, he was put in a delicate situation and was forced to explain his stance vis-à-vis the Self-respect Movement through a public statement. He explained that he favoured the reforms proposed by the Self-respect movement but not at the expense of the freedom of the nation.

On the whole, the Tirunelveli Special Conference ended with the moderates asserting themselves. Both the conservatives and the reformists were sidelined in the battle at Tirunelveli. But the war was not yet over."

[Quelle: A. R. Venkatachalapathy [Tamil ஆ. இரா. வேங்கடாசலபதி): In Those Days There Was No Coffee: Writings in Cultural History,  -- New Delhi : Yoda, 2006. -- Kindle ed. -- Fair use]

1929-05-16/21

Thirupathiripuliyur (Tamil திருப்பாதிரிப்புலியூர்): Saivite Conference

"The Thiruppathirippuliyur Conference was held as scheduled, and conducted for six days from 16 May 1929. The Conference was held with much fanfare in the Gnaniyar Mutt with Maraimalai Adigal in the chair. In this Conference, orthodoxy raised its head once again and attempted a comeback. Sivanesan [சிவநேசன்] expressed its apprehension that Maraimalai Adigal, instead of Gnaniyar Adigal being the chairman as contemplated earlier, would give way for concession to further reforms. It called for resolutions that would reflect, in its view, the true aspirations of the entire Saivite community.

One Rm. S. Chokkalinga Ayya of Chidambaram argued against the equality of all in the precincts of the temple. P. Muthaiah Pillai further continued his conservative attack by criticizsing at length the presidential address of Maraimalai Adigal.

The Conference finally concluded that religious reforms should be effected without prejudice to ‘indispensable ancient principles’, and granted quite a few concessions to the orthodox. The sporting of sacred ash, which was changed to ‘general practice' from 'indispensable practice' in the Tirunelveli Conference, was again reversed. Moreover the clause that only those who agreed to the resolutions would get franchise was incorporated into the constitution of the Saiva Siddhanta Mahasamajam [சைவ சித்தாந்த மஹாசமாஜம்], the apex body of all Saivite associations.

Thus did the Saivites meet the challenge posed by the Self-respect Movement. The moderates more or less asserted themselves by granting token concessions to the conservatives and fully warded off the reformist challenge."

[Quelle: A. R. Venkatachalapathy [Tamil ஆ. இரா. வேங்கடாசலபதி): In Those Days There Was No Coffee: Writings in Cultural History,  -- New Delhi : Yoda, 2006. -- Kindle ed. -- Fair use]

1929-06-29 - 1929-09-22

Artikel in der Self-Respect Zeitschrift Revolt zur Allianz zwischen Vellala (Tamil வேளாளர் - Vēḷāḷar) und Brahmanen gegen das Self-Respect Movement:

"K. M. Balasubramaniam, himself a Vellala, was the first to give currency to the idea that the orthodox Brahmans were behind the Vellalas in their attack on the Self-Respect movement. In his article entitled, 'Temple Entry in the Tamil Country’, he said:

I must confess to a feeling of unmixed horror and indignation at the fact that it is the non-Brahmans (Vellalas) that prove to be the most inveterate and unbending opponents to this enlightened movement .... I can quite understand if monopolists (Brahmans) were to oppose it. But I am simply scandalized to see opposition emanate from a non-Brahman. Verily the slave mentality has become too much deep rooted in our breasts, and nothing can be a better tribute to the machination and ingenuity of the priestly class than that they are able to remain at the background and ignite the sparks of opposition in the non-Brahmans themselves. It is to this incurable disease of self extinction that the efficacious panacea of Self-Respect ought to be administered.

This view seems to have been very popular among the Self-Respecters because P. Chidambaram Pillai in his serial articles in the Revolt entitled, ’Saivism: An Exposure’ and ’Saivite Mentality and Self-Respect’, suggested to the Brahmans and the Vellalas that they should pool their resources to fight the movement instead of working together clandestinely. He reminded them of the Smarta-Saivite alliance under the aegis of Saint Tirunavukkarasar and Gnanasambandar which contributed to the extinction of Jainism and Buddhism and the emergence of the ’neo-Saivism, violent political Brahmino Saivism’ in South India. He also maintained that the establishment of Saivism had been possible only with the aid of the gibbet and by persecuting the Jains mercilessly. Pillai warned that if the treachery of a Vellala Tirunavukkarasar contributed to the downfall of Jainism, the same Vellala community should not shoulder the blame for the eclipse of the Self-Respect movement by working in collusion with Brahmans. Instead he wanted the Vellalas, chiefly the educated youths, to join the ranks of the movement in order to remove the barriers of caste, religion and sex - the three great barriers to non—Brahman’s progress."

[Quelle: E. Sa. Visswanathan: The political career of E. V. Ramasami Naicker : A study in the politics of Tamilnad 1920 - 1949. -- Thesis: Canberra : Australian National University, 1973. -- S. 115f. -- Online: https://openresearch-repository.anu.edu.au/handle/1885/112063?mode=full. -- Fair use]

1929-07-21

Tinnevely (Tamil திருநெல்வேலி): True Saivites Conference

"But another ‘True Saivites’ Conference’ was held on 21 July 1929 at Tirunelveli, where P. Chidambaram Pillai of Nagercoil delivered a lecture on ‘Self-respect and Saivism’, wherein he attacked the degeneration that had set into Saivism due to the corrupting influence of Smartha Brahminism. In a desperate bid to win over the Saivites, he spoke of the Saiva Vellalar origins of the Self-respect Movement. He also tried to rally sober scholars like Sachidanandam Pillai by attempting to make common cause. But his strong condemnation of caste superiority and the Aryan element in Saivism, along with the advocacy of liberty, equality and fraternity were only bound to further alienate the Saivites.

K. M. Balasubramaniam wrote on more or less similar lines, presenting the Self-respect Saivite view in his articles in the Revolt."

[Quelle: A. R. Venkatachalapathy [Tamil ஆ. இரா. வேங்கடாசலபதி): In Those Days There Was No Coffee: Writings in Cultural History,  -- New Delhi : Yoda, 2006. -- Kindle ed. -- Fair use]

1930-05-31

Kumbakonam (Tamil கும்பகோணம்): Varnashrama Sangam (Tamil வர்ணாஸ்ரம சங்கம்)

"At a Varnashrama Sangam conference held at Kumbakonam on 31 May 1930 Brahman leaders instead of condemning the Self-Respecters out-right appealed to their community members to probe into the causes of the spread of atheism and hatred of Brahmanism in the country, instead of denouncing those who had been propagating them. They reasoned that when the Brahmans abandoned their noble ideals of plain living and high thinking, of service and sacrifice, in favour of competing with other communities for material benefits and prestige of office it resulted in the emergence of anti-Brahman and anti-religious movements. To forestall the spread of atheism and anti-Brahmanism as a cult in the South, Brahmans should return to the actual living of the doctrines of Vedantic philosophy, according to which they should scrupulously lead an austere and religious life. This bold evaluation of the situation can be seen from the presidential address delivered by V. V.Srinivasa Iyengar at the conference.

it seems to me that it is in the manner and measure in which he (Brahman) has, abandoning his own ideals, sought to compete with the other castes and communities not only for means of subsistence, but for the loaves and fishes of office and the offices of power that he has naturally caused in those other castes and communities great irritation, the logical and historical manifestation of which has been the non-Brahman movement in South India.... I feel strongly that if the Brahman should again succeed in regaining in any degree his lost position as a teacher and a leader, he should again set himself to reduce to actual practice his doctrines of Vedantic philosophy’.

In spite of this reasoning and evaluation by progressive Brahmans, the organizers of these conferences succeeded in passing resolutions to the contrary, reaffirming their faith in the validity of varnashrama dharma and in the sanctions against the scheduled castes."

[Quelle: E. Sa. Visswanathan: The political career of E. V. Ramasami Naicker : A study in the politics of Tamilnad 1920 - 1949. -- Thesis: Canberra : Australian National University, 1973. -- S. 113f. -- Online: https://openresearch-repository.anu.edu.au/handle/1885/112063?mode=full. -- Fair use]

1933 - 1939

Es erscheint die Tamil Literaturzeitschrift

மணிக்கொடி = Manikkodi - the premier nationalist Tamil weekly / gegründet von Stalin_Srinivasan (1899 - 1975)


Abb.: Titelblatt 1934-12-03
[Public domain]

1933

J. A. Yates zum Telugu-Unterricht:

"J. A. Yates, an Englishman, who was posted in 1906 as Inspector of Schools for the three Circar Districts of Godavari, Visakhapatnam and Ganjam, was puzzled by the Telugu language taught in schools which was so very different from any variety of the spoken, language, educated or uneducated. He noticed a similar situation in the Tamil area where be had worked earlier. He recalls his impressions as follows (1933: 24):

One may perhaps laugh in later days at one’s youthful enthusiasms, yet I have never condemned myself for the anger that flared up in me when I entered the miserable hovels, as they often were, in which the children of the out-castes were permitted to take their first steps to learning, and observed the pitiable waste of time taken to teach them literary forms of words even for such simple processes as counting annas that they did not possess. I could see no reason for teaching them a language they would never hear from men of the higher castes, literate or illiterate. Was it not possible, I asked, to find a cultivated current Telugu, for their instruction? A parallel might be found in England if the children of the slums were taught Elizabethan English or Chaucerians’ English or Older West Saxon, or, to make the parallel more exact, a hotch-potch of all these ; but of course no parallel of the sort could be found for no one in England had thought of inventing such a conglomeration of archaisms as a means of modern instruction.

P. T. Sreenivasa Iyengar, then Principal of the Mrs. A. V. N. College, Visakhapatnam, who himself had enlightened views on the language issue in schools advised Mr. Yates to discuss the question with G. V. Apparow (Epigraphist to H. H. the Maharaja of Vizianagaram) and G. V. Ramamurti (History Professor in the Raja’s College, Paralakimidi). It was the enlightened discussions among these four scholars—two non-Telugus and two Telugus, Yates, Srinivasa Iyengar, Apparow and Ramamurti -- and the organized efforts that followed their coming together that started the real confrontation and controversy between the Classicists, on the one hand, and the Modernists, on the other."

[Quelle: Bh. Krishnamurti: Classical or modern : a controversy of styles in education in Telugu. -- In:  Language Movements in India : E Annamalai : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive, 1979. -- S, 7f. -- Fair use]

1933-11-01

In der Tamil Zeitung குடி அரசு (Kudi Arasu) erscheint ein Editorial von E. V. Ramasamy (Tamil ஈ. வெ. இராமசாமி, 1879 - 1973) über "why today's Government should be overthrown". Deswegen wird er 1933-12-30 inhaftiert und zu 9 Monaten Haft sowie 300 Rs Strafe verurteilt.

1934-11-30

E. V. Ramasamy (Tamil ஈ. வெ. இராமசாமி, 1879 - 1973) in der Tamil  Wochenzeitschrift குடி அரசு (Kudi Arasu)

"Job Hunters

There are others who go to the extent of condemning us as job hunters. I don’t deny it. I am not ashamed of seeking jobs. What is there shameful in seeking jobs? What do the Brahmins of Aryan Race do? Are they not seeking jobs? Are they not job hunters? Who are they? If they have the right to claim for jobs, how ironical it is to call us as job hunters? Please think over. Who really has the legitimate right to seek jobs. I would say that our people alone have the right to hunt for jobs.

If any Dravidian community neglects to seek jobs I would say that the community is an irresponsible community. I would condemn them as unpatriotic and anti social. They are traitors to the country.

Not only that. If any particular community is differentiated or ignored it will be disastrous to the society. If it is objected that jobs should not be given to a particular community based on its proportion to the total population that would amount to putting that community to disgrace and injustice. No community would be willing to continue as cowards devoid of self-respect forever. Any community that fails to assert for its legitimate share in the field of employment will be considered as degraded and shameless community."

[Quelle: COLLECTED WORKS OF PERIYAR E.V.R. (thesatyashodhak.com). -- Fair use]

1935-09-01

E. V. Ramasamy (Tamil ஈ. வெ. இராமசாமி, 1879 - 1973) in der Tamil  Wochenzeitschrift குடி அரசு (Kudi Arasu):

"The government, which proclaims to root out communalism should have made the practice of putting caste marks as Namam on the foreheads as an offence and imprisoned the offender for one year. Similarly a law should have been passed to imprison for two years those, who wear the thread (Poonul). Are not these symbols indicative of the distinct communities? A government determined to eradicate castes ought to have given scissors to the policemen to cut away the tufts and Poonul. Simply saying that the government is not communal and yet permit the wearing of poonul, keeping tufts, chanting mantras (hymns), declare holidays for the birthdays of gods is condemnable. Under these circumstances, one cannot but condemn the government for upholding the communalism of Brahmins."

[Quelle: COLLECTED WORKS OF PERIYAR E.V.R. (thesatyashodhak.com). -- Fair use]

1937 - 1940

Madras Presidency: Anti-Hindi imposition agitation (Tamil இந்தித் திணிப்பு எதிர்ப்புப் போராட்டம் - Intit tiṇippu etirppup pōrāṭṭam)

"This controversy was followed by a broader alliance between the Self-respect Movement and the Saivites during the anti-Hindi agitation, 1937-39. In 1937, shortly after accepting office under the Government of India Act of 1935, C. Rajagopalachari introduced compulsory Hindi in schools. This was seen as a brazen act of imposition of a foreign language, to the detriment of Tamil language and culture. The Self-respect Movement launched an agitation calling for the repeal of Hindi. The Saivite elite too, who for long had championed the Tamil cause and even proclaimed themselves as the guardians of Tamil, jumped into the fray. Both sides opposed Hindi and saw its imposition as part of a larger Brahmin conspiracy.

The Saivites conducted a number of meetings and processions to condemn Rajaji’s [C. Rajagopalachari] move. Inaugurating the TiruchiTamil Conference, K. Subramania Pillai emphasised that the entry of Hindi would spell doom to Tamil and even called for the creation of a separate Tamil province. In the Annual Saiva Siddhanta Mahasamajam Conference at Vellore, held in December 1937, similar views were expressed and resolutions passed. One resolution condemned the imposition of Hindi, which, it was pointed out, was not even part of the Congress manifesto.

T.V. Umamaheswaran Pillai organised condemnatory meetings under the aegis of the Karanthai Tamil Sangam in Thanjavur. The Tillai Tamil Sangam at Chidambaram, in its first anniversary meeting condemned compulsory Hindi. Prominent Saivite Tamil scholars like N. Kandaswamy Pillai, Pandithamani Kathiresan Chettiar and S. Somasundara Bharathi participated in this conference. At Thiruvaiyaru, R. Venkatachalam Pillai led a rally of students of the Sentamil College on 31 August 1937. He also organised a meeting in November 1937, in which S. S. Bharati, T.V. Umamaheswaran Pillai and K. A. P. Viswanatham spoke.

The Saivite elite in their traditional stronghold of Tirunelveli organised an association called Tamil Pathukappu Kazhagam [தமிழ் பாதுகாப்பு கழகம்] (Tamil Protection Association) for fighting Hindi. Doyens of the Saivite world M.V. Nellaiyappa Pillai, M.S. Purnlingam Pillai, Punnaivananatha Mudaliar, K. Appadurai and V. Thiruvarangam Pillai were active in this association. The association also published a number of pamphlets. V. Thiruvarangam Pillai, who was the moving spirit behind it, also published a number of anti-Hindi writings in Sentamil Selvi, the Tamil research journal run by him. Scholars like Maraimalai Adigal, Sivananda Adigal, M.V. Nellaiyappa Pillai, Arul Thangayya, Devaneya Pavanar and Ilavalaganar contributed to the above journal. Such instances of Saivite opposition to Hindi are only a sample. Saivites played a major role in the agitation against Hindi, which needs to be explored in greater detail.

It was in this context that the Self-respect Movement sought to forge an open alliance with the Saivites. Its call to the Saivite world were marked by statements meant to provoke them into an active alliance, which also shed light on the actual nature of relationship then existing between the two. Kudi Arasu [குடி அரசு], exhorted the heads of the powerful Saivite mutts,

‘We will forget all that you have done earlier. Bravely come forward now; apart from providing pecuniary help, you should also send your devotees to our side...'

Again, in another editorial, Kudi Arasu, calling for the unity of all Tamils, dubbed the imposition of Hindi as an insult to Saivism. It went on to elaborate:

It can be generally said that if the Tamil people have tumbled into the Aryan trap and are unable to extricate themselves, it is because the Saivites are assisting the Aryans. ... It was because of this that Aryans achieved dominance in Tamil society through religion.... To this day, it is the Saivites who act as Hanumans in maintaining this dominance. We ask them: Should they not expiate for their past acts? There is no doubt that the ruthless rule of Achariar [Rajaji] [C. Rajagopalachari] will come to an end the very day that true Saivites attain at least an iota of Self-Respect and fight against their ‘satsudra’ status. And if Achariar is able to indulge in ruthless and foolhardy acts it is because he is certain that Saivites will not attain such consciousness very easily.

We see a shrewd mix of incitement and encouragement to both provoke and exhort Saivites to join hands with the Self-respect Movement to oppose Hindi. The basis on which the alliance was sought was anti-Brahminism and a threat to the Tamil language.

One ‘Sivapizhambu’ writing in Kudi Arasu reminded the Saivites of the hue and cry they had raised against the Self-respect Movement in the late 1920s, and asked sarcastically what they were going to do when the Brahmins were attacking Tamil which had been begotten by Lord Siva himself. One M.R. Mithiran of Dindigul wrote a verse epistle to Maraimalai Adigal requesting him to jump into the fray and join hands with S. S. Bharati in the fight against Hindi.

The call of the Self-respecters did not go unheeded. On the occasion of the annual celebrations at the Thirupathirippuliyur mutt, in June 1938, Gnaniyar Adigal said:

... A thousand years ago, Sanskrit came to Tamilnadu. We welcomed it. ... A few centuries ago, English came. We said, ‘Welcome’ and showed warm hospitality. What did we gain? Slowly these two languages devoured our Tamil language. Now Hindi too is coming. It is also going to be mandatory. Let it come and stay. Let Tamil be done away with; destroyed. Let Tamil lovers be abettors to this!

Such moving words uttered by a venerated scholar-saint could not be easily ignored. Even Thiru. Vi. Ka. [Thiru._V._Kalyanasundaram], who opposed the anti-Hindi agitation as it undermined the nationalist cause, was forced to publish this speech in his Navasakti.

An alliance between the Saivites and the Self-respect Movement was then struck and was marked by a series of meetings and conferences where both shared the platform. At the Third Selfrespect Conference in Thuraiyar, in August 1937, Periyar, Ponnambalanar, K. M. Balasubramaniam, C. N. Annadurai and K. A. P. Viswanatham spoke. In Madras, S. S. Bharati, Annadurai and K. M. Balasubramaniam spoke at an anti-Hindi meeting. K. M. Balasubramaniam, K. A. P. Viswanatham and C. N. Annadurai addressed the Third Salem District Self-respect Conference in October 1937.

S. S. Bharati went on an extended lecture tour of Tamilnadu calling for the repeal of compulsory Hindi. At Tirunelveli, C.N. Annadurai spoke on the platform of the Tamil Pathukappu Kazhagam [தமிழ் பாதுகாப்பு கழகம்] in October 1937, with M. S. Purnalingam Pillai in the chair, S. S. Bharati as a cospeaker and M.V. Nellaiyappa Pillai proposing a vote of thanks.

The Madras Provincial Conference, whose conferences usually teemed with Saivites, for its Third Conference at Tiruchi in December 1937, contained a fair proportion of Self-respect leaders like Periyar, C. N. Annadurai, Gurusami and Kunchitham. So was the Ramanathapuram District Tamil Conference, held in December 1938.

The Saivite journals were open to the Self-respecters and viceversa. The proceedings of the anti-Hindi agitation were reported at length, especially of the Saivite meetings, by Self-respect journals. Ezhathu Sivananda Adigal, on behalf of the Self-respect Movement, printed and distributed free, 15,000 copies of Maraimalai_Adigal’s book on 'Why Hindi should not be made the lingua franca of India’ [இந்தி பொது மொழியா].

The agitation against compulsory Hindi manifested views that both the Self-respect Movement and the Saivites shared. A classic instance is the inaugural lecture that T.V. Umamaheswaran Pillai delivered at the Tiruchi Tamil Conference in December 1937. Harking back to the great antiquity of Tamils, he ascribed their fall to Aryan conspiracy. The brazen actions of the Congress ministry and the vanity of Rajaji were identified with Brahminism and roundly condemned.

But the consensus that had been forged had its limits. The Self-respect Movement’s objectives were far-reaching, and the alliance with the Saivites had been arrived at only on an anti-brahmin platform to defend a commonly perceived threat to Tamil. The limits were clear even during the honeymoon at the Tiruchi conference. Periyar brought a resolution saying that the conference had lost confidence in the Governor as he had signed the Congress bill on Hindi. And, as the Kudi Arasu [குடி அரசு] remarked, many developed cold feet and Periyar’s resolution had to be dropped. A deputation to meet the Governor was then proposed. Periyar declined to be part of this deputation as he felt that the Governor would not intervene in this matter as the British had nothing to lose by mandatory Hindi.

This incident highlights the ambit of the consensus. The Self-respect Movement had far-reaching goals, and the anti-Hindi agitation was only one issue in its programme, and was not an end in itself as it was for the Saivites. Moreover, given its political experience, it was not averse to using coercive agitational tactics to achieve its programme. The Saivite elite could never think beyond safe, constitutional methods. It was only a sense of crisis and the threat of a common danger that had led to their alliance. With Congress relinquishing office after the outbreak of World War II and the repeal of compulsory Hindi, the stage was once again set for conflict. A tactical alliance could not hold when antagonistic ideological forces pulled at the sides."

[Quelle: A. R. Venkatachalapathy [Tamil ஆ. இரா. வேங்கடாசலபதி): In Those Days There Was No Coffee: Writings in Cultural History,  -- New Delhi : Yoda, 2006. -- Kindle ed. -- Fair use]

1937

Tinnevelly (Tamil திருநெல்வேலி): Gründung der தமிழ்ப் பாதுகாப்புக் கழகம் - Tamiḻp pātukāppuk kaḻakam (Society for the Protection of Tamil Language)

"The Tamiḻp pātukāppuk kaḻakam (Society for the Protection of Tamil), founded in Tirunelveli in 1937 by devotees associated with both the Shaiva Siddhanta Kazhagam and the Karanthai Tamil Sangam, issued a circular asking Tamil speakers to Tamilize their personal names and the names of their homes and workplaces, of streets and towns, of eating places, and so on. The circular ended with the words,

“Do service to Tamil and secure freedom”

(Visswanathan 1983: 197-99).

[Quelle: Sumathi Ramaswamy [சுமதி ராமஸ்வாமி]: Passions of tongue : Language devotion in Tamil India 1891 - 1970. -- Berkeley : Univ. of California Pr., 1997. -- S. 177. -- Fair use]

 1937-08-27

Madras (Tamil மதராஸ்): C. Rajagopalachari (Tamil சக்ரவர்தி ராஜகோபாலாச்சாரி - Cakravarti rājakōpālāccāri, 1878 - 1972) in einer Rede vor der Madras Christian College Union:

"We shall find ourselves handicapped and unable to take part in the federated India of the times to come, and we will be at a great disadvantage in every way if we do not know Hindi. It will affect our bread, our taxation and budgets, and many things will be done over our heads if we are not able to understand Hindustani."

[Quelle: E. Sa. Visswanathan: The political career of E. V. Ramasami Naicker : A study in the politics of Tamilnad 1920 - 1949. -- Thesis: Canberra : Australian National University, 1973. -- S. 216. -- Online: https://openresearch-repository.anu.edu.au/handle/1885/112063?mode=full. -- Fair use]

1938-02-28

Kanchipuram (Tamil காஞ்சிபுரம்): Anti-Hindi Conference.

Kurma Venkata Reddy Naidu (Telugu కూర్మా వెంకటరెడ్డి నాయుడు - Kūrmā Veṅkaṭareḍḍi Nāyuḍu, 1875 - 1942):

"Reddi Naidu an uncompromising critic of Rajaji [C. Rajagopalachari], questioned the very hypothesis that a common language was desirable for India, because the solidarity of the country depended, according to him, on factors other than language. At the Anti-Hindi Conference held at Kanchipuram in February 1938 he questioned whether a common language was essential and indispensable in a federal country like India for the assimilation of its people, for developing their sense of patriotism or for the solidarity of the nation. And he himself answered the question in the following manner;

Take, for instance, the case of Canada, which has a Federal form of Government and where two different languages, namely French and English have always been spoken. Take again, the case of South Africa where we find two different races, the English and the Dutch speaking two different languages, English and Afrikkaans, both officially recognized. Look at Switzerland, where we find three different races, speaking three different languages (yet) forming a single nation. By the Federal constitution of Switzerland of 1874 German, French and Italian are recognized as national languages, in spite of the fact that 71 per cent of the population speak German, 23 per cent speak French and only 5 or 6 per cent speak Italian."

[Quelle: E. Sa. Visswanathan: The political career of E. V. Ramasami Naicker : A study in the politics of Tamilnad 1920 - 1949. -- Thesis: Canberra : Australian National University, 1973. -- S. 220. -- Online: https://openresearch-repository.anu.edu.au/handle/1885/112063?mode=full. -- Fair use]

1938-04-21

Madras Presidency: Hindi wird Pflichtfremdsprache  von der 6. bis zur 8. Klasse in 125 Schulen.

"The premier [C. Rajagopalachari] ‘honestly believes,’ said A. T. Pannirselvam, a gifted opposition legislator,

‘that what he has set his mind upon is the will of the country’.

Contributing to the caste divide that so troubled CR [C. Rajagopalachari], this flaw, seen foremost in his Hindi policy, was seized upon by EVR [ E. V. Ramasamy].

We may never know whether this Hindi plan was a brainwave, a move to impress all of India, a compensation for CR’s own inability, hurting his right to nationwide leadership, to acquire fluency in the language, or something else.

In any case, in August 1937, within weeks of assuming office, his ministry declared that to equip South Indians for opportunities in the rest of the country, Hindi/Hindustani would be offered in schools. Later, in April 1938, a government order announced that Hindi/Hindustani would be taught in standards six to eight in 125 schools.

Students could choose either Devanagari or Urdu for writing the language, and failing an exam would not block promotion.

‘It is chutney on the leaf, taste it or leave it alone,’ said CR.

Opponents, however, called it poison, linked Hindi to CR the Brahmin, carried black flags to his meetings, denounced him daily in front of a few schools and his Mambalam home, and took out processions. On one occasion in Trichy, chappals were thrown at him.

The Hindi step brought the Justice Party and EVR closer to each other, accelerating a trend that had started in 1935. Pure Tamil advocates alleged that CR’s Tamil contained Sanskrit words. EVR and Saivite Vellalas put aside their differences. The Muslim League said that Hindi was Hindu. And EVR bonded with a brilliant young writer and journalist,  Conjeevaram Natarajan Annadurai (1909-69).

Born into the Sengundha Mudaliar caste where weaving was the traditional occupation, Annadurai was a writer for EVR’s Tamil weekly, Kudi Arasu, the Justice Party’s Tamil daily, Viduthalai [விடுதலை] (Freedom), which too had been handed over, early in 1937, to EVR, and for the Justice Party’s English journal, Justice. In 1936, he had stood as a twenty-seven-year-old on a Justice ticket for the Madras municipal corporation but lost.

On 5 September 1937, within weeks of the CR ministry’s first announcement that Hindi would be offered, Annadurai claimed at a public meeting at Soundarya Mahal in Madras that if Hindi was taught in the government’s 8,000 schools, at least 8,000 teachers of Hindi, all of them Brahmins, would find jobs.

Adding his voice to the agitation,  Pannirselvam claimed that Hindi to the Tamilian was

 ‘a foreign language, foreign in words, script, culture and tradition’.

Women took part in protest marches.

CR replied that fostering communal hatred injured ‘the national heart’. Yet he was unwise in at least two of his responses. Employing a provision in the law the British had used to combat picketing of shops selling toddy and foreign cloth, CR authorized non-bailable arrests of violators of his government’s bans.

When CR dismissed his governor’s advice against the step, Erskine wrote to the viceroy that it was

‘no business of mine to keep the Congress party popular’.

Indian Express and Swadesamitran [Tamil சுதேசமித்திரன்], both pro-Congress, counselled CR not to copy the Raj, as did Gandhi from afar, but CR was not budging.

A second mistake was to reject advice from Satyamurti and the educator-philosopher Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan to allow a parent to withdraw a child from the Hindi class.

It was in a climate of passion, confrontation and arrests that a Madras meeting called by the women’s wing of the Self-Respect Movement resolved that EVR would henceforth be called Periyar [பெரியார்], the great or big one. Held in mid-November 1938 and attended by hundreds of women, the meeting was chaired by Neelambigai Ammaiyar [நீலாம்பிகை அம்மையார், 1903 - 1945], daughter of the Saivite champion of pure Tamil, Maraimalai Adigal.

Yet Adigal’s own remarks in 1939 suggested not only aloofness from Hindi but a troubling disdain for other southern languages:

A language loses its vitality [and] a class of people becomes disintegrated and weak by harmful admixture... The once strong well-knit group of Tamils has, by corruption of their language, become the disjointed and decaying groups of Malayalees, Telugus _ etc.

By end-January 1939, 683 participants in the anti-Hindi movement, including EVR, Annadurai and 36 women, had been convicted for terms ranging from sixteen weeks to a year. Among them were 173 persons prosecuted for activity in front of CR’s house.

Six weeks after being formally addressed as Periyar, EVR, who had received a one-year sentence, was made the Justice Party president in absentia at a convention in Madras, where a fiery message he sent out from Bellary Jail was read out. Calling Brahmins ‘mosquitoes’, ‘bugs’ and ‘Jews’, EVR touched also on the abolition of zamindari proposed by the Congress, which the Justice Party had opposed. Abolishing the reign of priests was more important, EVR said.

The Justice Party asked for ‘Tamilnad’ to be made a distinct and separate state, loyal to the British Raj, and ‘directly under the Secretary of State for India’.

Questioned in the Assembly about EVR’s condition in Bellary’s prison, CR replied:

It is a good jail. I claim to be a personal friend of Mr. Naicker, though a very bitter political opponent. He knows that I am, so far as I can be, kind and considerate to him.

CR’s repartees in the assembly did not go down well with everyone. Some wanted greater public warmth from the premier for an unwell Periyar.

After months of demonstrations, intensity dropped. In May 1939, EVR was released on medical grounds, and Annadurai and all the others detained were also freed.

‘I have received exceptionally kind treatment,’ Periyar said when he came out."

[Quelle: Rajmohan Gandhi (Hindi राजमोहन गांधी, 1935 - ): Modern South India : A history from the 17th century to our times. -- New Delhi : Aleph, 2018. -- S. 299 - 302. -- Fair use]

Government Order zu Hindi:

"The attainment by our province of its rightful place in the national life of India requires that our educated youths should possess a working knowledge of the most widely spoken language in India. Government have therefore decided upon the introduction of Hindustani in the secondary school curriculum of our Province. Government desire to make it clear that Hindustani is not to he introduced in any elementary school whatsoever, the mother tongue being the only language taught in such schools. Hindustani is to be introduced only in secondary schools and there too, only in the 1st, 2nd and 3rd forms, that is to say, in the 6th, 7th and 8th years of school life. It will not interfere in any way with the teaching of the mother tongue in the secondary schools. The study of the mother tongue will continue to be enforced as before, and promotions from class to class will not be affected by failure of proficiency in Hindustani, but will depend, as before, on the general proficiency and marks obtained in other subjects including the mother tongue. Hindustani will be compulsory only in the sense that attendance in such classes will be compulsory and pupils cannot take Hindustani as a substitute for Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam or Kannada, but must learn Hindustani only in addition to one of these languages."

[Quelle: E. Sa. Visswanathan: The political career of E. V. Ramasami Naicker : A study in the politics of Tamilnad 1920 - 1949. -- Thesis: Canberra : Australian National University, 1973. -- S. 228f. -- Online: https://openresearch-repository.anu.edu.au/handle/1885/112063?mode=full. -- Fair use]

1938-05-01

Stalin Jegadeesan (Tamil ஸ்டாலின் ஜெகதீசன் - Sṭāliṉ jekatīcaṉ) beginnt Fasten gegen die Einführung von Hindi in Madras Presidency

"Along with Dhalamutthu [தாலமுத்து, 1925 - 1939] and Natarajan [இல. நடராசன், 1919 - 1939], these early protests against Hindi also produced another martyr in a young man who called himself Stalin Jegadeesan. On 1 May 1938, he started a fast, demanding the cancellation of the government’s Hindi legislation. He was frequently put on display at anti-Hindi meetings, and his photograph was periodically published in sympathetic newspapers. A statement issued by him, published in the Vitutalai [விடுதலை], had him declaring that he had gone on his fast to prove to Hindi supporters that Tamiḻttāy [தமிழ்த்தாய் = Mutter Tamil] still had loyal sons:

“I will return with our Tamilannai [தமிழன்னை] [Tamilttay], or I will die,”

he concluded.

Following his example, another man, named Ponnusami [பொன்னுசாமி], also went on a fast on 1 June in front of Rajagopalachari’s residence, sitting under a tree and carrying the Tamil banner (with its characteristic emblems of the tiger, the bow, and the fish, signifying the ancient Tamil dynasties of the Chola, Chera, and Pandya). He is reported to have declared:

“I shall fast unto death; even if released from jail I shall go and fast and die in front of the Premier’s house. If Jagadeesan should die . . . [a] thousand lives should go for it.”

Some anti-Hindi leaders such as Ramasami rejected fasting as a form of protest; others such as Annadurai used the example of Jegadeesan to spur Tamil speakers to join the cause. At an anti-Hindi meeting in 1938, Annadurai thundered,

 “If Jegadeesan dies, I am ready to take his place, and die along with ten other persons. As soon as Jegadeesan dies, you should also be prepared to die.”

Jegadeesan, however, did not die; on the contrary, it was reported that he had been stealthily eating at night all along, and his fast was called off after about ten weeks (Nambi Arooran 1980: 208-10; Visswanathan 1983: 201-5)."

[Quelle: Sumathi Ramaswamy [சுமதி ராமஸ்வாமி]: Passions of tongue : Language devotion in Tamil India 1891 - 1970. -- Berkeley : Univ. of California Pr., 1997. -- S. 230. -- Fair use]

1938-07-10

Die Andhra Zeitschrift "Social Reformer":

"An Andhra journal, the Social Reformer, in a trenchant article warned the people to be on their guard against the empire building designs of the North Indians and said,

... it is better that Andhras too say plainly that except the political freedom movement of Mr Gandhi, we do no want any of this silent empire building schemes to side-track us in our helpless movements. We may not love English but we love Hindi (the) least which cannot stand equal in status with our highly developed and ancient mother tongue .... Those that want it may learn it, but let them no more tack it to the swaraj issue .... If people do not say so publicly .... it is because they are all mesmerized on the whole some issue of swaraj and there has been no sufficient awakening in them through proper propaganda of the implications of Gandhi an side issues ...."

[Quelle: E. Sa. Visswanathan: The political career of E. V. Ramasami Naicker : A study in the politics of Tamilnad 1920 - 1949. -- Thesis: Canberra : Australian National University, 1973. -- S. 236. -- Online: https://openresearch-repository.anu.edu.au/handle/1885/112063?mode=full. -- Fair use]

1938-08

Madras (Tamil மதராஸ்): Eine der unzähligen Anti-Hindi-Demonstrationen.

"In August 1938, at an anti-Hindi gathering in Madras, the lead speaker, Pavalar Balasundaram [பாவலர் பாலசுந்தரம்], asked his audience,

“What is to be done with the Brahman community which is killing our [Tamiḻttāy - Tamil தமிழ்த்தாய் = Mutter Tamil]?”

[Quelle: Sumathi Ramaswamy [சுமதி ராமஸ்வாமி]: Passions of tongue : Language devotion in Tamil India 1891 - 1970. -- Berkeley : Univ. of California Pr., 1997. -- S. 195. -- Fair use]

"Consider the fate of M. Raghava Aiyangar, a leading member of the Madurai Tamil Sangam, who between 1905 and 1910 helped edit its famed journal, Centamil [செந்தமிழ்]. In 1913, Raghava Aiyangar was appointed as the chief Tamil pandit in the committee set up to produce the multivolume Tamil Lexicon, and he received the prestigious title of Rao Sahib in 1936 for his efforts. In addition, he wrote several historical and literary theses in a compensatory classicist vein, many critical commentaries, and a study of the ancient grammar, Tolkāppiyam (Zvelebil 1992: 203-5). The latter in particular was severely attacked within the devotional community, by contestatory classicists as well as Dravidianists, for its portrayal of the sexual morality of ancient Tamilians (Maraimalai Adigal 1936b; Pulavar Kulanthai 1958: 22-23). In August 1938, at an anti-Hindi rally held in Madras, Pavalar Balasundaram [பாவலர் பாலசுந்தரம்] fumed:

Raghava Ayyangar has written a commentary on Tolkappiyam. ... I shall read to you what he has written. . . .

“Tamilian women of those days were flirting with whomsoever they came across; the Aryans taught and gave them education to be chaste. . . .”

How dare he write like this? Today, it is the Brahman who plays the part of pimps.. . . [W]ith whom have our women flirted? Can a Tamilian who keeps quiet after this claim to be a human being? . . . Who can put up with such an insult? . . . Are not the Tamilian women our mother [sic]?"

[Quelle: Sumathi Ramaswamy [சுமதி ராமஸ்வாமி]: Passions of tongue : Language devotion in Tamil India 1891 - 1970. -- Berkeley : Univ. of California Pr., 1997. -- S. 195f.. -- Fair use]

1938-08-01 - 1938-09-11

Trichinopoly (Tamil திருச்சிராப்பள்ளி): Anti-Hindi Marsch nach Madras (Tamil மதராஸ்) der தமிழர் படை - Tamiḻar paṭai (Tamilian Brigade).


Abb.: Route Map of Anti-Hindi March
[Bildquelle: E. Sa. Visswanathan: The political career of E. V. Ramasami Naicker : A study in the politics of Tamilnad 1920 - 1949. -- Thesis: Canberra : Australian National University, 1973. -- nach S. 238. -- Online:
https://openresearch-repository.anu.edu.au/handle/1885/112063?mode=full. -- Fair use]

"The most spectacular of these protest marches was the one undertaken by the tamilar patai [தமிழர் படை], the “Tamilian Brigade,” in August-September 1938. Jointly organized by the Self-Respect movement and the Muslim League, the brigade of a hundred or so young men set out from Tiruchirappalli on 1 August, under the stewardship of Kumaraswami Pillai and Ramamirtham Ammal. During the next forty-two days, members of the brigade walked through 234 villages and 60 towns; and  they addressed eighty-seven public meetings attended by at least half a million. Opposition newspapers carried daily news of the brigade’s progress and noted the “rousing reception” it received in various towns and villages of the Presidency on its six-hundred-mile trek. In September 1938 it finally reached Madras, where many of its members joined the picketing activities in the city and were arrested. Not the least of the consequences of the march of the anti-Hindi brigade (which, contemporaries did not fail to note, resembled Gandhi’s famous march to Dandi, and Rajagopalachari’s to Vedaranyam in 1930) was the formation in smaller towns and villages of similar brigades, which took up the cause of spreading the anti-Hindi and pro-Tamil message (Ilanceliyan 1986: 114-23; Visswanathan 1983: 211-13)."

[Quelle: Sumathi Ramaswamy [சுமதி ராமஸ்வாமி]: Passions of tongue : Language devotion in Tamil India 1891 - 1970. -- Berkeley : Univ. of California Pr., 1997. -- S. 176f. -- Fair use]

1938-10-05

Madras (Tamil மதராஸ்): Eine der unzähligen Anti-Hindi-Demonstrationen.

"So declared a twenty-three-year-old youth at an anti-Hindi rally in Madras city in 1938:

“If the Tamilians have any heroism, the blood of several thousands of members of the Aryan race must be shed. The blood of the Aryans must be shed and a river of blood should flow in this country. The leaders may not have faith in violence, but we have faith in violence.. . . [T]housands of youths will arise for planting our red flag, and giving up their lives for the sake of Tamil.”

[Quelle: Sumathi Ramaswamy [சுமதி ராமஸ்வாமி]: Passions of tongue : Language devotion in Tamil India 1891 - 1970. -- Berkeley : Univ. of California Pr., 1997. -- S. 112. -- Fair use]

1938-11-13

Tamilnad Women's Conference, organisiert von Frau Annai Meenambal Shivaraj (Tamil அன்னை மீனாம்பாள் சிவராஜ் - Aṉṉai Mīṉāmpāḷ Civarāj, 1904 - 1992). Anti-Hindi. Die Konferenz verleiht  E. V. Ramasamy (Tamil ஈ. வெ. இராமசாமி, 1879 - 1973) den Titel Periyar (Tamil பெரியார் - der Große)

"At the 1938 Tamilnadu Women’s Conference which  Nilambikai [Tamil திருவரங்க நீலாம்பிகை, 1903 - 1945] addressed, another woman spoke with great passion about the need for Tamil women to “rise up in anger” and step forth to help their ailing mother, Tamiḻttāy [Tamil தமிழ்த்தாய் = Mutter Tamil]. Her name was V. P. Thamaraikanni (1911-71). Named Jalajatchi at birth, she was raised in a family of musicians and patrons of Tamil, and later Tamilized her given (Sanskritic) name. An author of many essays and novels, she did not get actively involved in politics, because both her father and husband were government employees (Lakshmi 1984: 77-78; Rajagopalan 1989: 5-7). By the late 1930s, however, she aligned herself with Ramasami’s Self-Respect movement and was a key speaker at many anti-Hindi conferences organized in Madras, Salem, Velur, Nagapattinam, and elsewhere. In 1938, she also published a short story called “Punitavati Allatu Tamilar Vitutalaip Por” [புனிதவதி அல்லது தமிழர் விடுதலைப்
போர்] (Punithavathi, or the Tamilian fight for freedom), which features a heroine, Punithavathi, who forsook her husband and her young daughter to help Tamilttay, and was arrested in this process (Ramaswamy 1992a: 53-56). Thamaraikanni’s spirited heroine asks,

 “What is the use of wealth, of freedom, and of human relationships, when I can be in the front ranks of those who serve Tamilttay?” (Thamaraikanni 1938: 21).

Thamaraikanni herself did not go to prison on behalf of her beloved language. But many other women did, following her impassioned speech at the November conference. This was the first time women— anywhere in the world, by some reckoning—had ever taken to the streets to battle on behalf of their “mother tongue,” it is proudly claimed. By February 1939, the battle against Hindi had intensified, and official figures show that thirty-six women, nine of them described as “ladies with children,” were arrested and sentenced to six months’ imprisonment; these figures almost doubled over the next few months (Ramaswamy 1992a: 56-57). Prison records show that many of the women had distinctly Tamil names; their ages ranged from eighteen to seventy; they were mostly illiterate and unemployed, and hailed from different parts of the Presidency. Devotional stories collapse their individuality into a larger narrative of Tamil devotion. Many of them are identified as daughters, wives, or daughters-in-law of well-known (male) anti-Hindi activists; as mothers, many of whom went to prison with their infant children; and as women who took pride in informing their sentencing judges that they were protesting against Hindi for the sake of their language and for the future of their children (Ilanceliyan 1986: 143-48)."

[Quelle: Sumathi Ramaswamy [சுமதி ராமஸ்வாமி]: Passions of tongue : Language devotion in Tamil India 1891 - 1970. -- Berkeley : Univ. of California Pr., 1997. -- S. 187f. -- Fair use]

1939

Madras (Tamil மதராஸ்): Es erscheint

Shaktidasan Subramnian (சக்திதாசன் சுப்பிரமணியன் - Caktitācaṉ cuppiramaṇiyaṉ) : தமிழ் வெறி - Tamiḻ veṟi (Passion for Tamil). -- Madras, 1939

“[Our] mind is Tamil;
[our] entire body is Tamil;
[our] life is Tamil;
[our] pulse is Tamil;
[our] veins are Tamil;
 [our] flesh, muscle, everything is Tamil;
everything in [our] body is Tamil, Tamil, Tamil”

(S. Subramanian 1939: 15-16).

[Quelle: Sumathi Ramaswamy [சுமதி ராமஸ்வாமி]: Passions of tongue : Language devotion in Tamil India 1891 - 1970. -- Berkeley : Univ. of California Pr., 1997. -- S. 6. -- Fair use]

1939-01-15

Tod von Natarajan (Tamil இல. நடராசன் - Ila. Naṭarācaṉ, 1919 - 1939), Tamil-"Märtyrer"

"If a populist political movement reaches its apogee when it gains its first martyrs, tamiḻppaṟṟu  [தமிழ்ப்பற்று - devotion to Tamil] attained that moment in 1939. Early that year, two young men, Natarajan and Dhalamutthu [தாலமுத்து, 1925 - 1939], died in prison, having been arrested along with numerous others for joining the anti-Hindi picketing in front of the Hindu Theological High School in Madras city. The government was quick to point out that both men had been in poor health when they had entered the prison, and that they died of cellulitis and amebic dysentery. In devotional writings, however, their deaths are presented as heroic sacrifices to the Tamil cause, and over the years these men have attained the status of devotees who selflessly gave up their lives for their language (Annadurai 1985: 34-36, 56-57; Karunanidhi 1989: 196-207; Parthasarathy 1986: 410-37). Their funeral processions in Madras city were attended by hundreds of mourners and marked by fiery speeches celebrating their martyrdom. Annadurai proclaimed that Natarajan’s name and deeds had to be inscribed in gold in the history of the world. Another admirer, Kanchi Rajagopalachari, a maverick Brahman in the Justice Party and archcritic of the government, declared that never before even in the glorious history of ancient Tamilnadu had anyone sacrificed his life for his language, predicting that Natarajan’s grave would become a hallowed site for all true Tamilians. Natarajan’s father, we are told, declared that his son’s spirit lived on in all true Tamilians and invited them to continue the battle for Tamil rights (Iraiyan 1981: 108).

[...]

Natarajan, government sources note in passing, was an illiterate twenty-year-old “Adi-Dravida” carpenter and a native of Madras. He was arrested on 5 December 1938, fell ill and was admitted  to the hospital on 30 December, and died on 15 January 1939. The 22 January issue of the Sunday Observer carried an interview with K. Lakshmanan, young Natarajan’s father, in which he declared that his son often sang religious and anti-Hindi songs at home. Three days prior to his arrest, his son had expressed his desire to go to jail for the sake of Tamil. Lakshmanan also said that when his son was hospitalized, he was told by the authorities that if he submitted an apology for his activities, he would be released from prison. But Natarajan refused. In its editorial of 22 January, the Nakaratutan declared that Natarajan, filled with “love for Tamil,” preferred to die a honorable death in prison rather than agree to a dishonorable release (Ilanceliyan 1986: 171-72; Visswanathan 1983: 244-47)."

[Quelle: Sumathi Ramaswamy [சுமதி ராமஸ்வாமி]: Passions of tongue : Language devotion in Tamil India 1891 - 1970. -- Berkeley : Univ. of California Pr., 1997. -- S. 229f. -- Fair use]

1939-04-01

Madras Presidency: Aus einer Tamil-Ansprache gegen C. Rajagopalachari (Tamil சக்ரவர்தி ராஜகோபாலாச்சாரி, 1878 - 1972):

"He was also described as a “pimp” who married his daughter [இலட்சுமி - Lakshmi] off to the North Indian, Gandhi’s son [Devdas Gandhi]: 

"This ungrateful Rajagopalachari who is baser than a dog, who was born in the coterie which came to beg, who is wearing dark spectacles and who has become a minister by playing the pimp of his daughter, is trying to play the pimp for his [Brahman] community”

(English transcription of Tamil speech; Government of Madras Order No. 549 [Public], 1 April 1939)."

[Quelle: Sumathi Ramaswamy [சுமதி ராமஸ்வாமி]: Passions of tongue : Language devotion in Tamil India 1891 - 1970. -- Berkeley : Univ. of California Pr., 1997. -- S. 269, Anm. 17. -- Fair use]

1939-07

Madras (Tamil மதராஸ்): Tamil Marriage Conference

"As part of its larger programme for a socially just and egalitarian society, the marriage-system also came under the Self-respect Movement’s attack. The prevailing system of marriages was condemned as patriarchal, Aryan, devised to serve the needs of Brahmin priests. To this system, the Self-respect Movement counter-posed a new form of marriage which emphasised the contractual nature of the relationship and the equality of man and woman in it. This new system did away with Brahmin officiation, rituals and even the thali [தாலி], the wedding chain tied around the neck of the bride. The radical nature of Self-respect marriages is, thus, too evident to need restatement.

While the anti-brahmin nature of Self-respect marriage was welcome to the Saivites, its other aspects, especially the antireligious and anti-patriarchal content were anathema. In July 1939, a Tamil Marriage Conference was conducted in Madras. Presided over by Maraimalai Adigal, the speakers included K. Subramania Pillai, S. S. Bharati and T.V. Umamaheswaran Pillai—the very same personalities who had spearheaded the Saivite vanguard of the anti-Hindi agitation. In the Conference, it was emphasised that present-day marriages were full of embellishments introduced by Aryan Brahmins after their infiltration into Tamil society. The ancient Tamil practice of marriage based on love was to be emulated. Brahmin officiation and Sanskrit incantations were to be abolished. Simple marriages, in the presence of elders, by the tying of the thali was to be the basis of the Tamil system of marriage."

[Quelle: A. R. Venkatachalapathy [Tamil ஆ. இரா. வேங்கடாசலபதி): In Those Days There Was No Coffee: Writings in Cultural History,  -- New Delhi : Yoda, 2006. -- Kindle ed. -- Fair use]

1939-10-27 - 1939-11-15

Rücktritt aller Congress Minister

Auf Anweisung des  Indian National Congress lauten die Rücktrittserklärungen:

“This Assembly recommends to the Government to convey to the Government of India and though them to the British Government that in consonance with the avowed aims of the present war, it is essential in order to secure the co-operation of the Indian people that the principles of democracy with effective safegurads for the Muslims and other minorities be applied to India and her policy be guided by her people ; and that Tndia should be regarded as an independent nation entitled to frame her own Constitution and further that suitable action should be taken in so far as it is possible in the immediate present to give effect to that principle in regard to present governance of India.

This Assembly regrets that die situation in India has not been rightly understood by His Majesty’s Government when authorising the statement that has been made on their behalf in regard to India and in view of this failure of the British Government to meet India’s demand, this Assembly is of opinion that the Government cannot associate itself with British policy.”

1940

தமிழர் சமய மாநாடு - Tamiḻar Camaya Mānāṭu  = Conference of Tamil Religion

"Following this, in 1940, the Saivites organised the Tamilar Samaya Manadu (Conference of Tamil Religion). Here too, Maraimalai Adigal, S. S. Bharati and K. Subramania Pillai gave shape to the Saivite response. The Self-respect Movement interpreted the pre-Aryan Tamil society in secular terms. A golden age of a harmonious society, devoid of religion and caste, was portrayed as the ideal that was to be recreated. The Saivite conception went only halfway. Pre-Aryan Tamil society, in this view, was a Vellalar civilisation. Saivism was its religion. Caste distinctions based on birth, rituals and priesthood were Aryan accretions. And some of the best elements of Aryan-Brahminism were actually the product of Tamil genius which had been appropriated from Saivism. These views were put forward in the Conference and colonial Hindu laws were condemned for their Aryan bias. During the course of the conference some Self-respect activists stormed in and tried to debate the resolutions, causing chaos. The Self-respect Movement also responded, in writing, to the Saivite view expressed in the Conference.

Such incidents of Self-respecters gate-crashing into Saivite meetings were more or less regular affairs, and were seen more as a nuisance than as real challenges to the Saivite view. For instance, at the Salem Sentamil Conference, presided over by Maraimalai Adigal, in October 1944, Era. Neduncheliyan

‘spoke insultingly of Saiva religion and temple worship and offended the audience which rose against him. He and his self-respecters caused great commotion.’"

[Quelle: A. R. Venkatachalapathy [Tamil ஆ. இரா. வேங்கடாசலபதி): In Those Days There Was No Coffee: Writings in Cultural History,  -- New Delhi : Yoda, 2006. -- Kindle ed. -- Fair use]

1940-03-31

 Periyar E. V. Ramasamy (Tamil ஈ. வெ. இராமசாமி, 1879 - 1973) in der Tamil Zeitschrift குடி அரசு (Kudi Arasu):

"Two years of Congress which was so Aryan ridden, could not but create a sense of despair in the minds of all non-Aryans ....It is but a natural desire on the part of the Muslims to live as a separate nation....Mr Jinnah’s arguments for this partition are cogent and unassailable and there is nothing wrong in that claim."

[Quelle: E. Sa. Visswanathan: The political career of E. V. Ramasami Naicker : A study in the politics of Tamilnad 1920 - 1949. -- Thesis: Canberra : Australian National University, 1973. -- S. 313. -- Online: https://openresearch-repository.anu.edu.au/handle/1885/112063?mode=full. -- Fair use]

1940-12-04

Salem (Tamil சேலம்): Periyar E. V. Ramasamy (Tamil ஈ. வெ. இராமசாமி, 1879 - 1973) in einer Ansprache:

"In that speech Naicker declared that non-Brahmans would merge with Congress if it 'guaranteed a due share of power’ to them without elucidating or elaborating what then would be the Justicite stand on the Dravidanad issue and the future role of their party in politics. Towards the conclusion of this speech he returned to his favourite theme of social justice and said

the monopoly of the intellectual classes (Brahmans) should cease. When they (non-Brahmans) asked for separate electorates a hue and cry was raised and it was said (that) it would mean division of the community on unhealthy lines, but the same thing was not said when non-Brahmans were dubbed as sudras and inferiors and allotted separate places in Brahmin coffee hotels. That pernicious distinction was being observed in railway refreshment rooms also and the sooner the practice was abandoned the better .

True to his statement, Naicker started a local agitation at Trichinopoly protesting against the exclusive dining arrangements made for Brahman passengers in the railway restaurants and succeeded in abolishing this practice in May 1941"

[Quelle: E. Sa. Visswanathan: The political career of E. V. Ramasami Naicker : A study in the politics of Tamilnad 1920 - 1949. -- Thesis: Canberra : Australian National University, 1973. -- S. 327f. -- Online: https://openresearch-repository.anu.edu.au/handle/1885/112063?mode=full. -- Fair use]

1941

Madras (Tamil மதராஸ்): Es erscheint:

Maraimalai_Adigal  (Tamil மறைமலை அடிகள், 1876 - 1950): தமிழர் மதம் - Tamiḻar matam (Tamilian creed). -- Pallavaram : Eigenverlag, 1941. -- 316 . -- Online: Tamilar Madham - Contents Page (tamilvu.org)

"English preface to the Tamilian Creed":

Wilfred Scawen Blunt says that Huxley had long suspected a common origin of the Egyptians and the Dravidians of India, perhaps a long belt of brown skinned men from India to Spain in very early days.

“This ‘belt’ of Huxley’s, of dark-white and brown-skinned men, this race of brunet-brown-folk, spread even farther than India; they reached to the shores of the Pacific, and they were everywhere the original possessors of the Neolithic culture and the beginners of what we call civilization. It is possible that these Brunet peoples are, so to speak the basic peoples of our modern world.”

H. G. Wells in his 'Outline of History' P.138.

What had been suspected by the genius of Prof. Huxley and accepted by Mr. H.G. Wells, has recently come off an undoubted fact established by the archaeological evidence which the excavations conducted at Harappa and Mohenjo daro  in the Punjab have afforded us. For Sir John Marshall, Director General of Archaeology in India has conclusively shown in his epoch-making work ”Mohenjo daro and the Indus Civilization” that the pre-Aryan people, the originators of the Indus Civilisation could be none other than the forefathers of the Dravidian people who at present occupy Southern India and that their culture bears a close resemblance to the culture of the Sumerians and the Egyptians as the result of the commercial intercourse they had had with the latter five thousand years ago. In exposing the error into which some of the oriental scholars had fallen when they came to speak of the pre-Aryan inhabitants of India. Sir John Marshall observes,

“They (the orientalists) pictured the pre-Aryans as little more than untutored savages (whom it would have been grotesque to credit with any reasoned scheme of religion or philosophy). Now that our knowledge of them has been revolutionized and we are constrained to recognize them as no less highly civilized-in some respects, indeed, more highly civilized-than the contemporary Sumerians or Egyptians, it behoves us to re-draw the picture afresh and revise existing misconceptions regarding their religion as well as their material culture.”

And in another place of his remarkable work he says:

“The Indus civilization was pre-Aryan and the Indus language or languages must have been Pre-Aryan also. Possibly, one or other of them (if, as seems likely, there was more than one) was Dravidic. This, for three reasons, seems a most likely conjecture-first, because Dravidic speaking people were the precursors of the Aryans over most of Northern India and were the only people likely to have been in possession of a culture as advanced as the Indus culture; secondly, because on the other side of the Krithar Range and at no great distance from the Indus valley, the Brahuis of Baluchistan have preserved among themselves an island of Dravidic speech which may well be a relic of pre-Aryan times, when Dravidic was perhaps the common language of these parts; thirdly, because the Dravidic languages being agglutinative it is not unreasonable to look for a possible connection between them and the agglutinative language of Sumer in the Indus valley, which as we know, had many other close ties with Sumer.”

So much precaution and reservation with which the above statement made by Sir John Marshall as regards, the high antiquity of the Dravidian people, their language and culture, may seem unnecessary to those who possess an intimate knowledge of ancient Tamil literature, some of the extant works of which such as Tolkappiyam, Paripadal, Purananooru and others date from 3500 B.C. to the first century A.D. and bear witness to the high level of civilization which the Tamils reached in pre-Aryan times. Certainly there could have been at that remote period none but one Dravidian language spoken not only all over India but even beyond its frontiers, and that language could have been no other than Tamil which still lives among twenty million people in all its literary glory and usefulness. Except Tamil no other Dravidian language possesses such vast, antique, varied, original, valuable literature, the literatures of the other few cultivated Dravidian tongues such as Kanarese, Telugu and Malayalam being not more than seven or eight hundred years old at most and even these consist of works either translated from Sanscrit or written in imitation of some Sanscrit works, it is an admitted fact that that language alone which possesses grammar and literature that forms the only criterion to estimate the height of civilization to which the people who owned them had attained. If in India of pre-Aryan times, there had existed no literary work that could be brought forward from any of the existing Dravidian languages except Tamil, then it is as certain as two and two makes four, that that language did not exist at that time or if it could be assumed that it did exist, it was not cultivated by a civilized people in any way. For the life of a civilized nation cannot get on without the cultivation of its language and the production of a varied literature. If Sir John Marshall had had a first hand knowledge of the Tholkappiam and some other ancient classics of Tamil, he would have easily shown in corroboration of what he stated as regards the pre-Aryan antiquity of one of the Dravidian language, that Tamil alone, and not any other as he vaguely affirmed, must have been the language spoken and cultivated by the pre-Aryan inhabitants of the Indus valley. Still, he has benefited the historians of the antique past by producing solid and substantial evidence in proof of the Tamilian civilization which was contemporaneous with the civilizations of the Egyptians, the Babylonians, the Sumerians and other ancient nations of the west. Fortunately we are now in a position strong and unshakable to correlate with the above archaeological evidence, the proofs afforded by the ancient and genuine literary works of the Tamil language."

[Quelle: paper_07 PDF (tamiluniversity.ac.in). -- Zugriff am 2021-10-22]

1941

Madras (Tamil மதராஸ்): Es erscheint:

K. Appadurai (Tamil கே. அப்பாதுரை - Kē. Appāturai, 1907 - 1989): குமரிக் கண்டம் அல்லது கடல் கொண்ட தென்னடு - Kumarik kaṇṭam allatu kaṭal koṇṭa teṉṉaṭu [Kumarikkantam Or, the southern land seized by the ozean]. -- Chennai : South India Saiva Siddhanta Works Publishing Society, 1941

"In 1941 K. Appadurai (1907-89) published the first monograph in Tamil on Lemuria, revealingly titled Kumarikkantam allatu katal konta tennatu (Kumarikkantam, Or the Southern Land Seized by the Ocean), a book that continues to be in print still today. Although the bulk of the book is based on the life and times of the Tamils of Kumarikkantam, which is, in turn (bizarrely enough), modeled on the life and times of Cervé’s [= Harvey Spencer Lewis, 1883 - 1939] Pacific Lemurians [Lemuria: The Lost Continent of the Pacific by Wishar Cervé and James Ward (rosicrucian.org)] (a fact left unacknowledged by the author), the two maps included in the monograph are derived from the Theosophical cartographies of Scott-Elliot. Entitled “Ilemuria: Pantai Nilai” (Lemuria: Ancient State) and “Ilemuria: Kurukiya Nilai” [இலெமூரிய: பண்டை நிலை] (Lemuria: Shrunken State), they are near translations into Tamil of Scott-Elliot’s 1904 world maps that showed the giant continent of Lemuria sprawled virtually across the entire earth. But there is one important difference. The continent—which is left unlabeled by Scott-Elliot—is now explicitly identified as “Kumarikkantam,” the Tamil orthography boldly etched across the part of the map that lies directly to the south of present-day India. And it is in this form that Scott-Elliot’s original occult maps have circulated in Tamil India since the 1940s, as Appadurai’s cartographic (re)creations have been reprinted several times, including in the 1975 college textbook published by the state government that I discussed at the end of the previous chapter."

[Quelle: Sumathi Ramaswamy [சுமதி ராமஸ்வாமி]: The lost land of Lemuria : Fabulous geographies, catastrophic histories. -- Berkeley : Univ. of California Pr., 2004. -- 334 S. : Ill. -- S.  209f. -- Fair use]

1942-03-30

Eine Delegation der Justice Party trifft Sir Richard Stafford Cripps (1889 - 1952) und die übrigen Mitglieder der Cripps Mission:

"On the announcement of the Cripps Mission Naicker hurriedly consulted some of the members of the committee who were supposed to frame a constitution for the Dravidian state and discussed with them the desirability of sending a Justice delegation to present their case. Accordingly a delegation consisting of Ramasami Naicker, Soundrapandiya Nadar, Samiappa Mudaliar and Muthiah Chettiar met the members of the Cripps Mission on 50 March 1942 and placed before them the Justice Party case for demanding a separate nation for the Dravidians.

According to Sir Stafford Cripps, the members of the Justice Party delegation impressed on him that the Presidency of Madras should secede from the Indian Union and form itself into a separate union so that the large majority of the non-Brahmans could save themselves from domination by the ’more wealthy and powerful Brahmin population' and obtain political power. This the members of the delegation were not confident of achieving either by a vote in the local legislative assembly or by plebiscite, since in both cases they feared that they would be outmanoeuvred by ’powerful elements'. Therefore to offset this disadvantage the delegation wanted separate electorates ’on such a scale as to give them automatically the majority in the Province'. As this was an ’impracticable suggestion’ opposed to democratic traditions. Cripps felt that the solution was not in separate electorates but in organization and leadership of the Justice Party so that it could persuade the people of Madras to vote for seceding from the Indian Union. He pointed out

.....this was a wholly impracticable suggestion and that it would raise the whole question of communal electorates as well, and that until such time as they could persuade the people of Madras to vote in their favour it was not possible within any democratic method at all to give them that majority which they desired. They appreciated this situation but were nevertheless insistent that something should be done to assist them. I pointed out, as sympathetically as possible, that in existing circumstances there was nothing we could do.

Although no party records are available on the interview of the Justice Party delegation with the members of the Cripps Mission, according to the presidential address delivered by Soundrapandiya Nadar at the South Arcot District Justice Party Conference, held on 14 April 1942, at Cuddalore, the members of the delegation pressed for the separation of Dravidanad from the rest of India and urged that until a decision was taken on that issue the non-Brahmans in the presidency should be given separate electorates. According to Nadar the members of the Mission seemed to have 'sympathetically viewed’ the Justicite demands. But on the question or separate electorates for non-Brahmans Sir Stafford Cripps seemed to have expressed the view that 'it was not easy of realization'."

[Quelle: E. Sa. Visswanathan: The political career of E. V. Ramasami Naicker : A study in the politics of Tamilnad 1920 - 1949. -- Thesis: Canberra : Australian National University, 1973. -- S. 329f. -- Online: https://openresearch-repository.anu.edu.au/handle/1885/112063?mode=full. -- Fair use]

1942-04-12

Die  Cripps Mission ist gescheitert, Cripps kehrt nach London zurück.

1942-04-28

Tirukalukundram (Tamil திருக்கழுகுன்றம்): Tod von U._V._Swaminatha_Iyer (Tamil உ. வே. சாமிநாதையர் - U. Vē. Cāminātaiyar, 1855 - 1942), "தமிழ்த் தாத்தா" - "Tamiḻt tāttā" = "Großvater Tamil"


Abb.: Briefmarke, 2006
[Wikimedia / GODL]

"Few narratives offer a more strikingly poignant portrayal of one devotee’s struggle to pursue scholarship in Tamil under circumstances that were both materially daunting and socially discouraging than Swaminatha Aiyar’s En Carittiram [என் சரித்திரம்] (My story). As a young man, Swaminathan recalls a visitor asking his father:

“‘What does your son do?’ My father replied, ‘He reads Tamil.’ Stunned, as if he had heard something incredible, he burst out, ‘What? Tamil?’ He did not stop there. ‘He reads Tamil? Why could he not study English? And how about Sanskrit? If he studies English, he would benefit in this world. The study of Sanskrit will prepare him for the other world. Studying Tamil will bring him neither benefit’”

(Swaminatha Aiyar 1982: 262). The visitor was not alone in thinking thus. Several of Swaminathan’s Brahman kinsmen urged him to study either Sanskrit or the more profitable English. But for him, as he wrote later, the motto of his life had been prefigured by the anonymous author of the seventeenth-century poem Tamil Vitututu [தமிழ் விடு தூது - Online: maturaic cokkanAtar tamiz viTu tUtu (in tamil script, unicode format) (projectmadurai.org)]:

“O preeminent Tamil! I exist because of you! / Even the ambrosia of the celestials, I do not desire!” (Swaminatha Aiyar 1991b: 127).

A native of Uthamadhanapuram in Tanjavur district, Swaminathan was born in 1855 and raised as a devout Smarta Brahman. His father made his (meager) livelihood through giving music performances and religious discourses in the Thanjavur hinterlands. Although supportive in most ways, his father wished that Swaminathan would follow in his footsteps and would study music and the Telugu language that was most appropriate for a career as musician. But Swaminathan tells us,

 “Contrary to everyone’s desires, from the time I was a young man, my mind was immersed in the beauties of the goddess Tamil (tamilt teyvam [Tamiḻ teyvam [தமிழ் தெய்வம் = goddess Tamil]). More and more, it yearned for Tamiḻttāy's [Tamil தமிழ்த்தாய் = Mutter Tamil] auspicious grace (tiruvarul [திருவருள்]). Sanskrit, Telugu, English—none of these held my interest. Sometimes, I even felt a deep aversion towards them. . . . Tamil had captured my heart” (Swaminatha Aiyar 1982: 156).

And Tamil had indeed captured his heart, for there appears to have been space for little else in his life, at least as it is narrativized in his reminiscences. He seems to have been attached to his parents, later even turning down an opportunity to teach in the prestigious Presidency College in Madras city so that they could spend their last days in their beloved Kaveri Valley. The birth of his first son is noted, with some joy. But in the seven-hundred-odd pages of his autobiography, his wife, Madurambikai [மதுராம்பிகை], does not feature at all, apart from a brief mention on the occasion of their marriage in 1868. Even that important rite of passage left him unmoved.

“It does not appear as if anything new has happened to me, now that I have become a householder.”

For a few days, before and after the occasion, he was filled with great joy, revelling in all the attention—and gifts (!)—he received. Then he soon realized that

“there was little gain from all this. I have only one purpose. Tamil is my wealth. It is the food for the hunger of my mind. ... It was true then. It is true now.”

So he concludes his brief discussion of his marriage (Swaminatha Aiyar 1982: 123-30).

The absence of details about his personal life is in striking contrast to the wealth of information he provides on the world of Tamil scholarship around the turn of this century. As he tells us on several occasions, he had no worldly interests other than the desire to study Tamil and to spend his time in the company of other Tamil scholars. He got ample opportunity to do so when he apprenticed himself around 1871 to Meenakshisundaram Pillai (1815-1876), perhaps the best-known Tamil savant of his time, on whom he later published a detailed biography. His relationship with his teacher, as he presents it in his reminiscences, echoes his relationship to the language; it was marked by intense reverence, devotion, even love. He recalls how he walked once, in the hot noonday sun, to another village, about two miles away, in order to procure a manuscript that he thought his master would like to see (Swaminatha Aiyar 1982: 193-94). He lapped up eagerly even the smallest word of praise that his master would throw his way, was jealous of fellow students who he feared may make their way into his master’s heart, and constantly worried about falling out of favor.

By his own reckoning, Swaminathan’s life took a dramatic turn on 21 October 1880, the day he met Ramasami Mudaliar, the munsif (civil judge) of Kumbakonam. By then, much had happened in his life. His master had died; he himself had moved to Kumbakonam, where he had secured a job teaching Tamil in the government college; he had an infant son; and he had already begun to acquire quite a name for himself in Tamil scholarly circles. Flushed with pride over his accomplishments, he set out to meet Ramasami Mudaliar, who he had heard was a Tamil enthusiast. Quizzed on the depth of his knowledge, Swaminathan tells us that he proudly rattled off the names of the numerous texts that he had learned by heart. Ramasami Mudaliar, however, was unimpressed.

“What is the use of knowing all this.. . . These are all later works. Do you know any of the ancient ones?” he asked.

A week later, he handed Swaminathan a manuscript of the ancient epic poem Cīvaka Cintāmaṇi, which he had never before seen. Humbled by the realization of how much more there was to know, he began the quest for other such old texts that changed the course of his life (Swaminatha Aiyar 1982: 528-34)-

As he recalls, this of course was no easy matter. Frequently relying on word-of-mouth information about manuscript collections in remote villages, he would walk for miles down country roads, sometimes riding bullock carts which broke down, at other times taking trains (one of the few signs in his autobiography, we note, of industrial modernity). On these trips—the equivalent of other people’s holy pilgrimages—he would sometimes encounter wonderful people who filled him with awe and joy because of their obvious reverence for Tamil, and because of the care with which they had maintained old Tamil manuscripts; their abodes, he writes, were “temples of the goddess Tamil (Tamiḻ teyvam [தமிழ் தெய்வம் = goddess Tamil])” (Swaminatha Aiyar 1982: 636-38, 690-94). More often, he came across signs of utter callousness, and with horror he recounts stories of old manuscripts being cast into fire as fuel, or thrown into the river. Our ancients tell us that Tamil survived fire and water in the past, but not any more, he writes. In many places, he ignored discomfort as well as personal disrespect. Had he been defeated by these hardships, he could never have restored Tamilttay’s jewels back to her, he writes (Swaminatha Aiyar 1982: 640-86). Until the very end of his life, he appears not to have lost his love for these manuscripts.

“My body may be tiring with age, but my mind has still not lost its devotion to these palm leaves,” he observes (Swaminatha Aiyar 1991b: 120).

With the acquisition of the desired manuscripts, the battle had only barely begun. He had to labor hard to read them, struggling over the meanings of archaic words that had long been in disuse, and to understand ancient worldviews quite alien to his Shaiva and Brahmanical upbringing. There were also the challenges of printing, at a time when that technology was still fairly new (Venkatachalapathy 1994a: 274-78). Unlike many later scholars, who would leave the details to the publisher and the press, Swaminathan supervised the entire printing process from start to end, from the selection of the font to the binding of the finished product. Above all, there were financial problems. Publication of these works demanded enormous outlays of money, far in excess of his modest income as a college teacher, and he had to turn to a network of patrons—some reliable, others not so. On more than one occasion, he had to borrow money to keep the printing process going. He also spent many of his waking moments worrying over potential competitors (including fellow devotee  Damodaram Pillai), who might beat him to the punch, and dealing with nasty rumors that were floated about his inabilities and inadequacies. About his troubles and worries, he writes:

“In the land of tenral [தென்றல்] [southern breeze] and sandal, our Tamil reigns, sweet and soft. I have dedicated myself to the auspicious service (tiruppaṇi  [திருப்பணி]) of that glorious goddess Tamil. Thanks to the wondrous grace of that goddess, the waves of trouble of this world do not deluge me in misery” (Swaminatha Aiyar 1982: 657).

Not surprisingly, when the first copies of his published Cintāmaṇi arrived from the binders, he stacked them reverentially and offered them worship. For, he writes, the text— whether published or unpublished—

“appears to me as the image of a deity. My desire is only to wipe away the dust and clothe it anew so I can see it.... I believe that each part of it is divinity itself” (Swaminatha Aiyar 1982: 611).

Swaminathan lived his life in the high noon of empire. Yet there are few signs of colonialism, westernization, or modernity in his reminiscences. With touching candor, he confesses to the thrill of excitement he felt as a child when he learned the English alphabet. There must be something magical about it, he notes, for even mere association with it confers so much prestige (Swaminatha Aiyar 1982: 61-62). Frequently, during the course of his travels and research, he would encounter fellow devotees—Vedanayakam Pillai, Damodaram Pillai, and others—who knew English and were obviously men of influence and power. And yet it astounded him that they continued to be enthusiastic about Tamil. Swaminathan was not alone in registering such wonder, and a special affection is accorded in the devotional community to all those who had not let their knowledge of English, or their worldly affluence, get in the way of their love for Tamil. Indeed, in the early years of tamiḻppaṟṟu  [தமிழ்ப்பற்று - devotion to Tamil], there were quite a few “gentlemen scholars” such as J. Nallaswami Pillai and P. V. Manickam Nayakar, who, like Swaminathan, expressed their devotion to Tamil through their scholarship. But they moved in a world that appeared far removed from Swaminathan’s. They had university degrees, were well-placed in the hierarchies of government, were fluent in English, and were materially well-off."

[Quelle: Sumathi Ramaswamy [சுமதி ராமஸ்வாமி]: Passions of tongue : Language devotion in Tamil India 1891 - 1970. -- Berkeley : Univ. of California Pr., 1997. -- S. 208 - 212. -- Fair use]

1943

Madras Presidency: Kampagne des Self-Respect Movement (Tamil சுயமரியாதை இயக்கம்), das Kambaramayanam (Tamil கம்பராமாயணம்) und das Periya Puranam (Tamil பெரிய‌ புராண‌ம்) öffentlich zu verbrennen.

"In 1943, when the Self-respect Movement launched a campaign to burn publicly, the Kamba Ramayanam and the Periyapuranam, the Saivite reaction was a muted echo of the late 1920s. Pandithamani Kathiresan Chettiar released a statement condemning the move in strong terms. And when an open debate between the Self-respect leaders and Saivite scholars was organised in early 1943,  C. N. Annadurai and Ezhathu Adigal faced S. Somasundara Bharathi and R. P. Sethu Pillai. While the brunt of the attack was borne by Kamba Ramayanam, the Saivite classic Periyapuranam received only token mention. Moreover, S.S. Bharati and Sethu Pillai defended the classics, not in religious/Saivite terms but more or less on literary and aesthetic grounds. Anna carried the day with his youthful exuberance and novel style of elocution."

[Quelle: A. R. Venkatachalapathy [Tamil ஆ. இரா. வேங்கடாசலபதி): In Those Days There Was No Coffee: Writings in Cultural History,  -- New Delhi : Yoda, 2006. -- Kindle ed. -- Fair use]

1943

தமிழ் உணர்ச்சி மாநாடு - Tamiḻ uṇarcci mānāṭu = Tamil Consciousness Conference

"Although the relative importance of Tamil and Sanskrit in temple worship has varied from sect to sect, the two languages have been an integral part of the region’s institutionalized scriptural Hinduism from the late first millennium c.e. (Cutler 1987:187-94; Peterson 1989: 54-56). Over the centuries, periodic doctrinal and sectarian conflict had erupted around the question of language and liturgy (A. Appadurai 1981: 77-82), but beginning in the 1920s, with neo-Shaivism taking on an increasingly radical stance, the call came for completely excising Sanskrit and its scriptures from Tamilnadu temples and replacing these with Tamil and its scriptures.

Along with this also came the demand, as was voiced in 1943 by the Tamil Unarcci Manatu, the “Tamil Consciousness Conference,” for de-Sanskritizing the names of deities, temples, and temple towns and replacing them with their original or former Tamil names (Ilankumaran 1991: 175).

One enthusiast even urged that throughout Tamilnadu, all temples ought to follow only one uniform Tamil liturgical text and priests should be taught to remember that they are Tamilians, should be assured that conducting worship in Tamil would bring in more remuneration, and should be granted honors if they perform good aruccanai (அருச்சனை) in Tamil."

[Quelle: Sumathi Ramaswamy [சுமதி ராமஸ்வாமி]: Passions of tongue : Language devotion in Tamil India 1891 - 1970. -- Berkeley : Univ. of California Pr., 1997. -- S. 138. -- Fair use]

1943 (1942?)

Uraufführung des Schauspiels:

C. N. Annadurai (Tamil சி. என். அண்ணாதுரை - Ci. Eṉ. Aṇṇāturai, 1909 - 1969): சந்திரோதயம் - Cantirōtayam (Chandrodayam)

"Annadurai wrote the script of the play and his friends, who had had little or no previous experience, were the chief actors. Annadurai was no exception, yet he took a leading role in the play. With all these shortcomings when the play was staged at one of the Justice conferences in 1942, not only was it well attended but also it received favourable comments from those experienced in the dramatic field. Emboldened by this success, he staged the play subsequently at other Justice Party and D.K. [Dravidar Kazhagam] conferences and also in all the important towns in the Tamil districts ’Chandrodayam’, despite its success as a stage play, cannot be considered great as literature, even when compared with some of Annadurai’s later works, which are regarded as masterpieces. What he set out to achieve was the employment of a literary genre to popularize some of the reforming ideas advanced by the D.K. in an entertaining and impressive way, and in this he was highly successful. Vanchinatha Sastri, one of the main characters in the play is drawn as a villain and as a representative of what Annadurai considered as Brahmanism. As an old priest in a zamin temple, he wields enormous power with the zamindar and his subjects.

Using this advantageous position he contrives a plot by which he can deprive the zamindar of his wealth and position in society. In contrast to this character is Durairaj, the leader of the local rationalist society, who misses no opportunity to ridicule caste, Vanchinatha Sastri and his young wife’s amorous activities. Durairaj is charged with a fictitious theft, but Vanchinatha Sastri helps him to escape with a stem warning not to enter the zamin estate to meddle with his plans. Vexed with his failure, Durairaj wanders aimlessly and involves himself in a treacherous plot to overthrow the Head of a Saiva religious math, and aids the plotters to succeed in their scheme for a share in their spoils. He returns a rich man, with the pseudonym Mayendran, only to find the zamindar swindled out of his wealth and his only daughter widowed after a marriage to an aged zamindar arranged by Vanchinatha Sastri for money. Thereafter Durairaj addresses himself to exposing the priest’s treachery and villainy to the zemindar. He succeeds in this mission and frees the zamindar from slavery to Brahmanical ideas. To prove his reformation he agrees to give his widowed daughter in re-marriage to one of Durairaj’s friends, who has been in love with her. The hero, Durairaj, himself commits suicide to escape prison for his role in dispossessing the Head of the Saiva math of his wealth and position.

This is an allegorical play in which Tamilnad is portrayed as a rich land where the leader and the people are slaves to the cultural ideas of Brahmans. To liberate them from this domination comes Ramasami Naicker in the person of Durairaj in the play with his message of rationalism. Whether the audience understood this allegorical import or not, they were no doubt made to contemplate and accept the obvious truth that religion as practised and religious institutions as they functioned in society do not have their self-proclaimed sanctity or infallibility, because those who practise religion and run the institutions are mere human beings given to human inperfections. The priest Vanchinatha Sastri and the Head of the Saiva math in the play are purposely painted in the blackest dye so that the illiterate and semi-illiterate masses who witnessed the play could understand that those who practise religion are in no way superior and that religion like other things is but a vocation and a special prerogative of Brahmans in society. This message could not have gone deeper among the common people in a land which had given birth to and nourished for over twelve hundred years the Bhakti movement, which is still a strong force among the Tamils."

[Quelle: E. Sa. Visswanathan: The political career of E. V. Ramasami Naicker : A study in the politics of Tamilnad 1920 - 1949. -- Thesis: Canberra : Australian National University, 1973. -- S. 361ff. -- Online: https://openresearch-repository.anu.edu.au/handle/1885/112063?mode=full. -- Fair use]

1944

 Periyar E. V. Ramasamy (Tamil ஈ. வெ. இராமசாமி, 1879 - 1973) in einer Ansprache:

"In a revealing speech of 1944, Ramasami offered the following advice to his fellow Dravidians:

“You may well ask, ‘If we give up Hinduism, what religion can we profess to have?’ Have courage and claim that religion which will not demean you as untouchable and lowly in society. If there is objection to this, you may always say you are Dravidian and that your religion is Dravidianism. If you have problems even with that, say that your religion is humanity”

(Anaimuthu 1974: 446)."

[Quelle: Sumathi Ramaswamy [சுமதி ராமஸ்வாமி]: Passions of tongue : Language devotion in Tamil India 1891 - 1970. -- Berkeley : Univ. of California Pr., 1997. -- S. 69. -- Fair use]

1944

Konapattu: Es erscheint:

K. Appadurai (Tamil அப்பாதுரை): தமிழ் வாழ்க! - Tamiḻ vāḻka! (May Tamil flourish). -- Konapattu, 1944

"Thus K. Appadurai refers to the missionary devotees, Caldwell and Pope, as vellait tamilar [வெள்ளைத் தமிழர்] (white Tamilians), and writes:

I wish to declare that all those who show devotion to Tamil ought to be considered tamilar [தமிழர் - Tamile]. It gives me great pleasure to include amongst Tamilians all those who come to the Tamil land and learn and use Tamil and turn into devotees of Tamil.... If asked who are the Tamilians, we could easily say that they are those who reverence Tamiḻttāy [தமிழ்த்தாய் = Mutter Tamil]. If asked who are the friends of Tamilians, they are the speakers of other languages who wish they could have been borne by Tamilttay’s womb.

(K. Appadurai 1944: 11-21)"

[Quelle: Sumathi Ramaswamy [சுமதி ராமஸ்வாமி]: Passions of tongue : Language devotion in Tamil India 1891 - 1970. -- Berkeley : Univ. of California Pr., 1997. -- S. 251f. -- Fair use]

1944

Madras (Tamil மதராஸ் ; Telugu మద్రాస్): Es erscheint:

M. Rajamanikkam (Tamil  ராஜமாணிக்கம், 1907 - 1967): மறைந்த நகரம் அல்லது மொஹெஞ்சோ-தாரோ - Maṟainta nakaram allatu moheñcō-tārō [The Lost City or Mohenjo-Daro : For chilrend]. -- Madras : South India Saiva Siddhanta Works Publishing Society, 1944

"M. Rajamanikkam (1907-67) similarly introduced Mohenjodaro and its excavated remains, this time to Tamil children, by noting that he wrote the book to arouse their consciousness about “their lost and buried past,” and to make them realize that

“the predominant part of Tamilnadu’s ancient history lies hidden in the earth.”

Ongoing archaeological work was only confirming what Tamil literature had maintained all along, that there had been a Tamil civilization which was lost to the ocean and that Dravidians had lived all over India thousands of years ago:

“Some are attempting to conceal this fact. As devotees of Tamil, you should come forth and help establish the antiquity of your mother tongue, the greatness of your Dravidian civilization. May Mother Tamil offer you her grace.”

[Quelle: Sumathi Ramaswamy [சுமதி ராமஸ்வாமி]: The lost land of Lemuria : Fabulous geographies, catastrophic histories. -- Berkeley : Univ. of California Pr., 2004. -- 334 S. : Ill. -- S. 122. -- Fair use]

1944

Tod von V. Tiruvarangam Pillai (Tamil வ. திருவரங்கம் பிள்ளை - Va. Tiruvaraṅkam Piḷḷai, 1890 - 1944), Gründer (1920) des Shaiva Siddhanta Kazhagam (Tamil சைவ சித்தாந்த கழகம்)

"A less spectacular, but no less heroic, model of patronage is offered by the life of V. Tiruvarangam Pillai, the founder of the Shaiva Siddhanta Kazhagam, perhaps the largest publishing house devoted to printing ancient Tamil literary and religious books from its inception in 1920 to this day. Tiruvarangam’s life, in stark contrast to Pandithurai’s, began in a humble Vellala home in Palayamkottai in Tirunelveli district, where his family ran a general merchandise store. When his father died in 1899, the young Tiruvarangam, who was then only nine years old, went to work in Tuticorin to support his family. When he was seventeen, he sailed to Colombo where he worked for a number of years in various commercial establishments. His entrepreneurial skills must have been forged in this context, for he was able to gather together enough money in 1914 to help finance the first trip to Colombo by Maraimalai Adigal (about whose skills as a speaker and reformer there was much talk). Furthermore, he was also able to put together a handsome purse which he presented to Maraimalai and which enabled the latter to continue with his work in Madras. Over the next few years, Tiruvarangam continued to help Maraimalai’s reform activities by arranging for public lectures, collecting funds, and opening bookstores in Colombo and Madras to help sell the reformer’s books. In 1920, he even launched a monthly journal called Centamilkkalanciyam, primarily for the purpose of publishing Maraimalai’s commentary on the Tiruvacakam (Ilankumaran 1982: 1-30) .

His crowning achievement, however, was the establishment of the Kazhagam in Tirunelveli in 1920, with a branch office opening in Madras in 1921. His biographer tells us that he took the cue from Maraimalai and his circle of scholar friends, who lamented that Tamilians were quick to invest in all kinds of new ventures but none would support the publication of books of knowledge which are the very source of life (Ilankumaran 1982: 30-31). True to the spirit of tamiḻppaṟṟu  [தமிழ்ப்பற்று - devotion to Tamil], its admirers insist that although the Kazhagam is a business venture, it has not let economic reasons override its dedication to the cause of Tamil (Ilankumaran 1991: 183). The Kazhagam’s involvement in Tamil devotional activities over the past few decades has been manifold, including the support of educational institutions as well as of Tamil libraries. Additionally, it has convened numerous public conferences on various aspects of Shaiva and Tamil literature, on the creation of Tamil technical terms, on Tamilnadu history, and the like. In 1937, Tiruvarangam and his associates played a key role in the founding in Tirunelveli of the Tamilp Patukappuk Kalakam [தமிழ் பாதுகாப்புக் கழகம்] (Society for the Protection of Tamil), which published several pamphlets and books promoting the cause of taṉittamiḻ [தனித்தமிழ் - pure Tamil]  and protesting the government’s Hindi policy. In 1923, Tiruvarangam also started the Centamilc Celvi [செந்தமிழ் செல்வி], a journal devoted to promoting the twin causes of Shaivism and Tamil that is still published today.

But over and above all this, Tiruvarangam’s fame in the world of tamilpparru rests on the role that the Kazhagam has played in the field of publishing: under its auspices, almost every major work in Tamil and Shaiva literature, as well as several minor and hitherto unknown ones, has been printed and made available to the public. Indeed, the image of Tiruvarangam that is remembered most fondly by fellow devotees is that of a man whose voluminous coat pockets were ever stuffed with old manuscripts and galley proofs. In 1980, V. S. Manickam, then vice-chancellor of Madurai Kamaraj University, noted that if Tiruvarangam had not founded the Kazhagam, none of the following would have found their way into print: Tamil school textbooks, the Cankam poems, the Tolkāppiyam, M. Varadarajan’s sparkling commentary on the Tirukkural, dictionaries and encyclopedias, and the Centamilc Celvi. Consequently,

“our Tamiḻttāy [Tamil தமிழ்த்தாய் = Mutter Tamil], too, would have wandered around like a weakling able to carry only one child. [But, because of the Kazhagam], our Tamilttay has acquired several heads and arms, her blood has been enriched with knowledge, and her nerves and sinews have been strengthened with books. She now has the capacity to go everywhere in all directions; even shouldering the burden of fifty million of her children, she flourishes happily” (quoted in Ilankumaran 1982: 2).""

[Quelle: Sumathi Ramaswamy [சுமதி ராமஸ்வாமி]: Passions of tongue : Language devotion in Tamil India 1891 - 1970. -- Berkeley : Univ. of California Pr., 1997. -- S. 222ff. -- Fair use]

1944-10

Chidambaram (Tamil சிதம்பரம்): Varnaashrama Maanadu (Varnashrama Meeting) der Kasten-Hindus. Starke Gegenbewegung von Seiten der Anhänger von Periyar E. V. Ramasamy (Tamil ஈ. வெ. இராமசாமி, 1879 - 1973)

M._Karunanidhi (Tamil மு. கருணாநிதி, 1924 - 2018) in Tamil dagegen:

"In our glorious state
Which has sung the song of many victories
Without a bit of shame
Some selfish brethren come together
And even if they turn somersaults in a vain effort
To set down the roots of varnam (caste)
Protect your self-respect
Upon pain of death, brave Tamizhaa!
Fight!
Down with Varnaashramam!"

[Quelle: Sandhya Ravishankar (Tamil சந்தியா ரவிசங்கர்): Karunanidhi : A life in politics. -- HarperCollins, 2019. -- Kindle ed. -- Fair use]

1945

Es erscheint das Tamil Gedicht:

Bharathidasan (Tamil பாரதிதாசன், 1891 - 1964): தமிழ்இயக்கம் - Tamiḻiyakkam  (The resurgence of Tamil). -- Online: Thamizh Iyakkam - Bharathidasan.pdf (bjp.org)

1945

Madras (Tamil மதராஸ்): Es erscheint:

N. S. Kandiah Pillai: நமது நாடு - Namatu nāṭu [Our nation]. -- Madras : South India Saiva Siddhanta Works Publishing Society, 1945

"Finally, borrowing here from a popular strategy of nineteenth- and twentieth-century diffusionism, some devotees even used maps to show the dispersal of the original Tamil population out of Kumarinatu and their re-settlement in different parts of the world. The earliest of such maps that I have seen is entitled “Descendants of Tamilians” (1943) and shows those parts of the globe that we today identify as the Middle East, northeast Africa, the Mediterranean, and southern Europe. Its author, Kandiah Pillai, illustrates the map with an extensive discussion of such “descendants” as Sumerians, Egyptians, Elamites, Babylonians, Cretans, ancient Britons, Phoenicians, Assyrians, Hebrews, Arabs, and Chinese, among others.147 A few years later, in a book, intended for young children, Kandiah Pillai included a similar map that used arrows to show the migration of the inhabitants of “Kumarinatu” to the Indus Valley, Sumeria, Phoenicia, Egypt, even England and elsewhere."

[Quelle: Sumathi Ramaswamy [சுமதி ராமஸ்வாமி]: The lost land of Lemuria : Fabulous geographies, catastrophic histories. -- Berkeley : Univ. of California Pr., 2004. -- 334 S. : Ill. -- S. 126. -- Fair use]

1945

Tod von Frau Nilambikai (Tamil திருவரங்க நீலாம்பிகை - Tiruvaraṅka nīlāmpikai, 1903 - 1945)

"Nilambikai has been described in the biography written by her brother as a woman who came into this world solely for the purpose of serving Tamil:

“she embodies tamiḻppaṟṟu  [தமிழ்ப்பற்று - devotion to Tamil]; her life is the life of Tamil; she cannot be pried apart from Tamil” (M. Tirunavukarasu 1945: 50).

Born in 1903, Nilambikai’s life and future as a Tamil devotee was over-determined. The favorite daughter of Maraimalai Adigal, she was raised on the shoulders and laps of other well-known devotees such as Arasan Shanmugan (1868-1915) and Pandithurai Thevar (1867-1911), who were her father’s friends and patrons. Her father appears to have taken great pride in her love for Tamil, even making her memorize, when she was thirteen, one of his essays on the duties of motherhood, which she publicly recited at a scholarly meeting in Madras. So impressed was he with his young daughter, her brother tells us, that Maraimalai Adigal declared passionately one day,

“Nila’s face resembles that of Shelley and Shakespeare and other great savants” (M. Tirunavukarasu 1945: 8-12).

In the devotional community, Nilambikai occupies a special niche for her role in spurring her famous father into launching his pure Tamil movement in 1916. Her brother recalls that Nilambikai bestowed pure Tamil names upon her siblings, and would use only those; she would speak and write as far as possible in pure Tamil; and she would correct anyone who used a foreign word when speaking in Tamil (M. Tirunavukarasu 1945: 14-15). Soon after, in 1918, when she turned sixteen, Nilambikai met the twenty-eight-year-old Tiruvarangam Pillai (1890-1944), who a few years later was to set up the famous Shaiva Siddhanta Kazhagam. Her brother remembers that his entire family had come to see Tiruvarangam as a godlike figure, their father’s savior and patron. It is perhaps not surprising that young Nilambikai fell in love with him, although she was not allowed to marry him for almost ten years (M. Tirunavukarasu 1945: 21-35).

Intertwined though her life may have been with those of these famous devotees, Nilambikai nevertheless strived to serve Tamil on her own as well. By the time she was in her early twenties, she had published numerous essays on the virtues of taṉittamiḻ [தனித்தமிழ் - pure Tamil] in the face of considerable opposition to the pure Tamil movement (Nilambikai i960). She followed this up in 1937 with a dictionary, the first of its kind, which demonstrated the existence of pure Tamil equivalents for seven thousand Sanskrit words that had swamped Tamil (Nilambikai 1952). She also taught Tamil in girls’ schools; spoke at various Shaiva conferences; and wrote extensively on the revival of Tamil, the spread of Shaivism, and the improvement of women. By all accounts, she was alarmed by what she saw as an absence of interest in Tamil among its female speakers, a concern that she voiced especially strongly in her inaugural address to the Tamilnadu Women’s Conference summoned in November 1938 to register Tamil women’s protest against Hindi. Of course, Nilambikai’s vision for how women should help their language fell within the parameters of middle-class motherhood. They should establish tanittamil [pure Tamil] women’s colleges and bookstores, encourage widow education, and become Tamil teachers. But such public services should never compromise their primary function as educated homemakers who raised their children to be well-read, disciplined, and pure Tamil speakers (Nilambikai n.d.). She wrote and spoke ardently on such matters in spite of poor health, and in spite of having to take care of her own eight children. At least by her brother’s account, she took great pride in her own motherhood, raising her children to be devout Shaivites and Tamil speakers (M. Tirunavukarasu 1945: 38-43). But it is hard to deny that the birth of eleven children over a period of about fifteen years must have taken its toll on her health, and she was only forty-three when she died in 1945, a year after her beloved husband and fellow devotee had passed on."

[Quelle: Sumathi Ramaswamy [சுமதி ராமஸ்வாமி]: Passions of tongue : Language devotion in Tamil India 1891 - 1970. -- Berkeley : Univ. of California Pr., 1997. -- S. 185ff. -- Fair use]

1945-10

Aufruf an alle Vollzeit-Mitarbeiter des Dravidar Kazhagam (DK) (Tamil: திராவிடர் கழகம் -- Dravidian Federation) sich der Dravidan Freedom Force (Blackshirts Movement) anzuschließen. Einer der ersten ist M._Karunanidhi (Tamil மு. கருணாநிதி, 1924 - 2018)

"In the 1940s, Dravidian movement founder EV Ramasamy was invited for a music function. The artist who was playing the Nadaswaram was sweating profusely and was wiping his face often with a towel that he had kept by his side. After some time, the Nadaswaram player got sick of picking the towel and placed it on his shoulder for pure convenience. Now, the sponsor of the show, an upper caste zamindar of the area, was offended by this defiant act of the lower caste nadaswaram artist. He openly and loudly ordered the musician to remove the towel from his shoulder.

EVR [
EV Ramasamy], a social reformer, condemned the zamindar's attitude and walked away. The next day on, Ramasamy requested all Dravidar Kazhagam members to wear a thundu (towel) in protest against the upper caste attire of angavasthram (a long ornamental towel).

"In those days, Periyar (EVR) wanted to uproot caste sentiments and superstitions prevalent in Tamil society. So, he chose the towel and to fight superstition, he chose the black shirt. The cadres of the Dravidian movement have followed it with zeal,"

MDMK [Marumalarchi Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam] propaganda secretary Mallai Sathya told India Today. Once CN Annadurai, for some reason, came to a meeting in a plain shirt instead of black.

Periyar said Annadurai cannot get up on the stage for not wearing black. And to boot, it was Karunanidhi who signed on first when Periyar started the Black Shirt Brigade in 1945. And to this day, he boasts of the fact in meetings. But when Periyar declared August 15, 1947 [Unabhängigkeit], as a black day and asked the cadres to wear black shirts, Annadurai and his clique in the DK [Dravidar Kazhagam] refused.

When the DK split leading to the formation of the DMK [
Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam], they formed a custom of wearing black only on protest marches.

"When Karunanidhi returned to wearing black shirts, our leader Veeramani was elated. He merrily pointed out that we got our old Dravidar Kazhaga Kalaignar [கலைஞர் = Künstler = Karunanidhi]. He also requested Kalaignar that this should continue. But we don't understand why he reverted to the old dress code,"

says DK youth wing secretary S.Senthamizh Socrates.

But the very towel that was a symbol of equality later became a tool for discrimination among the leaders and cadres. In Dravidian parties, it became a custom to offer hand-woven towels to small leaders and offer silk or Kashmiri shawls to big leaders.

"We condem this trend of  forstering hierarchy by differentiating with towels," says Socrates.

In the 1980s, bordered dhotis and towels came into vogue among party leaders and cadres. Karunandhi changed from white to coloured towels. Second-rung DMK leaders like V. R. Nedunchezhiyan and Anbazhagan changed to towels with different colours or flower designs. The DMK leaders wore long towels that touched the floor with a flourish. When MG Ramachandran broke away to form the AIADMK [All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam], he wore a short towel that barely covered the shoulders. A symbolic differentiation."

[Quelle: Anand Natarajan: It's not all black and white in Tamil Nadu dress politics - India News (indiatoday.in). -- Fair use]

1946

K. A. P. Viswanatham (Tamil கி. ஆ. பெ. விசுவநாதம் - Ki. Ā. Pe. Vicuvanātam, 1899 - 1994) in der Zeitschrift தமிழர் நாடு - Tamiḻar nāṭu:

“Westerners refer to the Tamilian as ‘Black Man.’ His neighbors refer to him as ‘Indian.’ Aryans call him ‘Dravidian,’ and Brahmans, ‘Shudra.’ At the time of the Vedas, he was referred to as ‘arakkar [அரக்கர்]’ [demon]. Members of the Justice Party called him ‘non-Brahman,’ and for the Government, he is a ‘non-Muslim.’ .. . When there is no one to refer to the Tamilian as ‘Tamilian,’ will at least the Tamilian call himself ‘Tamilian’?”

[Quelle: Sumathi Ramaswamy [சுமதி ராமஸ்வாமி]: Passions of tongue : Language devotion in Tamil India 1891 - 1970. -- Berkeley : Univ. of California Pr., 1997. -- S. 250. -- Fair use]

1946-11-21

Madras (Tamil மதராஸ்): Gründung des Tamil Arasu Kazhagam (Tamil தமிழ் அரசு கழகம் - Association for Tamil Autonomy)

1947

Aruppukkottai (Tamil அருப்புக்கோட்டை): Es erscheint:

M. S. Ramasami: திராவிடநாடு பிரிவினைப் பாடல்கள் - Tirāviṭanāṭu piriviṉaip pāṭalkaḷ  (Songs of separation of the Dravidian nation). -- Aruppukkottai, 1947

"The Brahmans and Banias have united;
We are all children of Bharata Mata [Mutter Indien], they lie to us[.]
....
Our own Tiravitattay [
திராவிடத்தாய்] [Mother Dravida] is our mother;
Bharata Mata who belongs to the duplicitous, is a deceitful mother;
If the Dravidians realize this, they will have no trouble.
If we let down our guard, the Northerners will loot and plunder [us]."

(M. S. Ramasami 1947: 14)

[Quelle: Sumathi Ramaswamy [சுமதி ராமஸ்வாமி]: Passions of tongue : Language devotion in Tamil India 1891 - 1970. -- Berkeley : Univ. of California Pr., 1997. -- S. 67. -- Fair use]

1947-08-10

C. N. Annadurai (Tamil சி. என். அண்ணாதுரை, 1909 - 1969) widerspricht in der Tamil Zeitschrift திராவிட நாடு (Dravida Nadu) Periyar E. V. Ramasamy (Tamil ஈ. வெ. இராமசாமி, 1879 - 1973), der zum Boykott der Unabhängigkeitsfeiern aufgerufen hatte:

"Until August 1947 the rift between Annadurai and Naicker [Periyar E. V. Ramasamy] remained dormant. In the first week of August, Naicker, as usual without any consultation with the members of the working committee or the general secretary, declared that the members of the Kazhagam [Dravidar Kazhagam] should boycott the Independence Day celebrations scheduled to be held on the 15th, because he believed that political power would pass from the hands of the British, but not to the Dravidians, who would continue to be vassals under the Aryan Baniyas, and therefore it was not an occasion for rejoicing but one for mourning. Moreover, he urged his followers to arrange public meetings between 9 and 12 August so that they could explain to the people the reasons for boycotting the Independence Day celebrations. The opposition to Naicker’s stand came from Annadurai, who wrote a 12-page letter in Dravida Nadu on 10 August 1947 explaining the reasons why the members of the D.K.[Dravidar Kazhagam]  should take part in the celebrations.

In his letter Annadurai contended that in the freedom struggle not only the Aryans but such illustrious Dravidians as Tiruppur Kumaran and V. O. Chidambaram Pillai had also participated, and for that reason the members of the Dravida Kazhagam, despite their reservations, should participate in this memorable occasion. Secondly, if Naicker’s arbitrary decision was implicity followed, it would only damage the present image of the Kazhagam among other Dravidians of different political views, for they would consider that the Kazhagam, despite its pretensions of opposing the British for the past three years, was in fact a quisling party. Furthermore Annadurai reasoned that

'it would not be proper to ignore or to measure the great event, that would be watched keenly by the entire world, by the yardstick of Kazhagam principles alone'.

And therefore he made an appeal.

August 15 is the only day and the last day given to the members of the Kazhagam to prove publically that they in their life time repudiated British colonialism, advocated complete independence for India and that they are neither slaves nor quislings as has been charged by the Congress. Why should we miss this opportunity and earn lasting infamy?´"

[Quelle: E. Sa. Visswanathan: The political career of E. V. Ramasami Naicker : A study in the politics of Tamilnad 1920 - 1949. -- Thesis: Canberra : Australian National University, 1973. -- S. 377f. -- Online: https://openresearch-repository.anu.edu.au/handle/1885/112063?mode=full. -- Fair use]

1947-08-15

"Tamil Nadu on August 15, 1947: Euphoria and boycott

By Yogesh Kabirdoss and Samhati Mohapatra

While flags unfurled, patriotic songs sung, and oaths taken to mark the historic day, followers of Periyar mourned the day by hoisting black flags.

For the people of Tamil region, August 15, 1947 had many meanings. 84-year-old Gandhian, S Pandian, recalls that every street corner was festooned with flags be it in khadi, silk or paper and there was a certain air of festivity around.

 “Women prepared sweet pongal in temples and drew special kolams outside their houses. Across localities freedom fighters unfurled the tricolour and students assembled in their schools to participate in the historic day. Speeches were made and sweets distributed,”

says Pandian, who then a 16-year-old was studying in St Mary’s High school at East Veli street of the temple city.

For freedom fighters languishing in jails across the country, the eve of Independence Day, was not only a day of liberation, but of victory too. The then Premier of Madras Presidency Omandur Ramaswamy Reddiar Omandue. Ramaswamy Reddiar - originally sworn in as Prime Minister of Madras Presidency, he had his title changed so India didn’t have two Prime Ministers on Independence Day - had ordered an amnesty for prisoners. Freedom fighter and CPM veteran N. Sankaraiah, implicated with his comrade P. Ramamurthy in the Madurai Conspiracy Case, was released from the Madurai Central Jail on the eve of Independece Day.

“A huge crowd had gathered outside the jail to greet the communist leaders who were released after a 10-month-long incarceration. They were taken in a procession to Thilagar Thidal where the entire city had gathered to participate in a meeting. Leaders like Ramamurthy and KTK. Thangamani - Wikipedia gave speeches, urging the people to respect those who sacrificed their lives to bring freedom and carry forward the legacy,”

says Sankaraiah’s son S Narasimhan.

In Madras Presidency, radio sets were installed in parks for the public to listen to the AIR [All India Radio] broadcast of the transfer of power in New Delhi. Patriotic songs were played on the streets of Chennai  while theatres in the city threw open their doors for free shows. S Rajakumaran in his book ‘Omanthurar Muthalvarkalin Muthalvar’ [ஓமந்தூரார்: முதல்வர்களின் முதல்வர்] says that one of the first things that the premier did in free India was to ask the British ICS [Indian Civil Service] officers (the then equivalent of IAS officers) to “pack up their bags and leave the country” as it would not be proper on their part to hold on to their posts which Indian officers should occupy.

Miles away at Myanmar, hundreds of soldiers, many of them Tamils, of the Indian National Army (INA) led by Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose were released from jail, a day after India got its freedom from the British. Nonagenarian Ramaiah, originally from Vedaranyam but who had joined INA in Malaysia, says he was in the battalion of the first infantry brigade, which reached Rangoon (in erstwhile Burma) first after they were released.

“Our battalion was later ferried to Bengal in vans. On reaching Bengal, we had a heroes’ welcome, with people thronging both sides of the road to receive us,” says Ramaiah.

For followers of Periyar E. V. Ramasamy , however, the day meant a transfer of power from the “British to the Brahmins and Baniyas”.

“It was not Independence in the true sense. That is why our party workers hoisted black flags to mourn the day. Even in Chennai, we wore black shirts in protest. Our protest did not go down well with many and our party workers were attacked by hooligans in Cuddalore and Tirunelveli,”

says K. Veeramani, president of Dravidar Kazhagam.

Defending that stand, Veeramani says his organisation had a legitimate right to oppose the departure of the British from the country at that point of time as they left without settling the issue of casteism.

 “Dravidar Kazhagam followers will not participate in the Independence day celebrations. They will boycott it,”

he quotes Periyar as saying in a statement on August 9, 1947.

Stating that Periyar believed more on social integration than national integration he says,

“He believed that if you are sincere about an Independent India, it must be independent of caste.”"

[Quelle: Tamil Nadu on August 15, 1947: Euphoria and boycott (indiatimes.com). -- Zugriff am 2021-10-06. -- Fair use]

"Annadurai disagreed openly with his mentor Periyar.

 ‘It is not a sad day, 15 August is a joyous day,’ he stated. ‘It is incorrect to view through the narrow lens of our ideology such a momentous occasion watched by the world. 15 August is a day that will herald the end of two hundred years of suppression and rancour; it is an important day for Dravidam too,’ he said."

[Quelle: Sandhya Ravishankar (Tamil சந்தியா ரவிசங்கர் - Cantiyā Ravicaṅkar): Karunanidhi : A life in politics. -- HarperCollins, 2019. -- Kindle ed. -- Fair use]

1947-08-31

In der Tamil-nationalistischen Zeitung திராவிடன் - Tirāviṭaṉ erscheint ein Gedicht mit folgendem Vers:


Abb.: Titelleiste

“The foreign Bharata Mata (anniyap paratattay [அந்நியப பரதத்தாய்]) has attained glory.
Our own dear
Tamiḻttāy [தமிழ்த்தாய் = Mutter Tamil] has been greatly disgraced.”

[Quelle: Sumathi Ramaswamy [சுமதி ராமஸ்வாமி]: Passions of tongue : Language devotion in Tamil India 1891 - 1970. -- Berkeley : Univ. of California Pr., 1997. -- S. 67. -- Fair use]

1948

Madras (Tamil மதராஸ் ; Telugu మద్రాస్): Es erscheint:

K. Appadurai (Tamil கா. அப்பாத்துரை, 1907 - 1989): India's language problem. -- Madras : Tamil India Publ., [1948]. -- 174 S. -- Mit einer Introduction by Swami Vedachalam [=  Maraimalai_Adigal  (Tamil மறைமலை அடிகள், 1876 - 1950)]. --  Online: India's language problem : | Appātturai, Kā, : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

Aus der Introdution von Maraimalai_Adigal  (Tamil மறைமலை அடிகள் - Maṟaimalai Aṭikaḷ, 1876 - 1950):

"Hindi Cannot be a Common Language

Again, in view of the large number of people by whom Hindi is spoken at present, a strong plea is being put forward to adopt it as the common language of India. It does not seem to be a sound judgment to take numbers alone into account in such a vital matter. The number of people living in a spacious country may at one time increase enormously and at another time decrease to a surprisingly low fraction. Is it not a palpable fact that war and disease, volcanic eruptions and famines as unforeseen occurrences have tended to diminish the number of people to the lowest degree? At one time the plague in England and at another time the same in India devastated some of the densely populated parts of the two countries, so much so that the population of those parts was almost reduced to a zero point. Have not the terrible European wars that raged after 1911 and 1939 annihilated the lives of untold millions? Not to say the magnificent towns and vast countries that were razed to the ground and sunk into water by volcanic eruptions, do not such vicissitudes of life tell against the futile argument for a common language to be based solely upon the large number of people speaking it at one time ?

Further, look into the fortunes of the English language. Before the time of Queen Elizabeth, that is, three hundred years ago it was not such a refined language as it is now, nor it had regular grammar, being spoken hardly by a few millions of people confined to a little island, England. But see now, how great a refinement and polish it has attained so as to rival even Tamil—the Tamil which had preceded it by 5000 years in all its beauty, accuracy of grammar and brilliant rhetoric, and had been spoken in antiquity all over the world by countless millions of civilized people and eve now being spoken by thirty millions of people living mainly in South India and Ceylon exclusive of those found everywhere in the world as trading and industrial colonies.

Moreover, Hindi is not a single language uniformally spoken in the North and the name

"is more often employed as a vague term to denote all the rural dialects of the three languages—Bihari, Eastern Hindi and Western Hindi spoken between Bengal proper and the Punjab.” (The Imperial Gazetteer of India Vol. I page 364).

And the number of people who speak Bihari is 34 millions, those who speak Eastern Hindi are 22 millions and those who use Western Hindi are 40 millions. These being three distinct languages those who speak the one do not understand the other. It is quite wrong to call the three different languages, “Hindi,” as if they were one. The object of calling the three by one name may be to exaggerate the prevalence of a single dialect and mislead the people to adopt it as a common tongue.

Hindi is only 300 years old and is Poor

Further Hindi is poor in original literature ; some of its epics like the mythical Ramayana, being mere translations from Sanskrit epics and legends which in no way improve the understanding of the people but deplorably hamper freedom of thought and unbiased enquiry. And a still another defect of Hindi is that it cannot stand independently of Sanskrit, its words and phrases being taken mostly from Sanskrit. From these facts it must be clear to all sensible persons that neither the study of Hindi nor the study of its much vaunted parent Sanskrit can serve to bring either earthly or heavenly benefit to people at large.

Tamil is a very Ancient Tongue and Rich in Rare Original Works

As shown above, neither Hindi nor any other language of India, and I make bold to say that except Tamil, not even the most cultivated language of the modern world as French can aspire to rise to the elevated position of unifying all the people of the whole world into one such family as would speak one language and would worship one almighty God, the father of the universe. Well, why do we make an exception in the case of the Tamil language alone? Simply because Tamil alone possesses literatures that have been produced from 5000 B. C. up to the present. Since 5000 B.C. violent changes in the physical and mental, social and religious lives of the people have occurred periodically and continuously in the vast Tamilian continent, but the Tamil people by providential care have with their land, language and remnants of literature and religion survived the catastrophes that had overtaken them all through the varying ages and their own existence in them. The Tamil literary works produced before the tenth century A. D. are quite original and are enriched with the treasures of natural ideas and pure thoughts and noble sentiments concerning not only objects of nature and of undeveloped and developed minds but also of the relation of human beings in contact and conflict with one another and with the lower animal kingdom. And last but not least deeply and closely argued conclusions about the course and end of this earthly life and of the life to come in an invisible world under the guidance of superior intelligences are enshrined in its classics.

[...]

The Religion of the Tamils as common to all

Now, as regards “religion” which forms the mainstay of the human mind, since it ever hankers after an Almighty Being who can conduct him unscathed through the ordeals of his life, and land him safely on the other side which opens out to receive him and set him in everlasting happiness, we may say the ancient Tamils, especially their great thinkers, discovered the open secret about God and the ways and means to attain him. What they discovered to be God being acceptable to all, had been worshipped by all, all throughout the world, without any difference in any way. This led all the people in antiquity to live peacefully, making no room whatever for splitting them up into multifarious sects and driving them to war with each other and shed oceans of their blood in the name of religion. Religion then formed the common ground for intimate union and mutual help. They all worshipped the same symbol of God from the very eastern extremity of this globe to the western. So there was no clash between the cherished belief of one sect and that of the other. Strictly speaking there was no sect at all among the ancient people.

Well, what was that ancient and common symbol of God which was the single object of worship among all people in the prehistoric as well as in the historic ages ? Here Archaeology comes to our aid to give a definite answer to this vital question. Let me quote what Mr. Westroppe has written on this point.

Linga worship

‘‘The practice of ‘ linga worship ' was so general as to have spread itself over a large part of the habitable globe, for it flourished for many ages in Egypt and Syria, Persia, Asia Minor, Greece and Italy, it still is in vigour in India and many parts of Africa and was even found in America on its discovery by the Spaniards, being regarded as the most sacred object of worship and consecrated by religion. The culture was associated with very idea and sentiment which was regarded as ennobling to man.”

From this true and unbiased statement of a European research scholar, the fact is brought home to our mind that in ancient times all the people who lived in the habitable parts of this earth worshipped only one symbol of God which in later ages is called “Siva Linga,” Now, the form of this symbol shaped either in stone or in wood or in any brick-work looks like unto a cone set in the middle of a circular object. In other words, the combination of a circle and a line constitutes the form of the Siva Linga. In India from Cape Comorin to the Himalayas one can meet with in every nook and corner and in illustrious cities such as Rameswaram, Madura and Chidambaram in the South, and Benares, Vaidyanath, Darjeeling and others in the North, innumerable Siva temples in the central shrine of which this cone-shaped figure, Siva Linga, is set up and worshipped daily by millions of people.

Why such a queer shaped figure as Siva Linga should have been chosen by all the people all over the world for the worship of God, cannot fail to strike the mind of a thinking man and prompt him to seek the real meaning of it. And many who reflected upon it came to hold the view that it represented the union of the male and female generative organs which symbolize the productive function of God. Though such an account may appeal to certain minds as explaining the meaning of “Siva Linga,” yet, why, of the many functions, the creative function alone of God, should have been sought by the whole mankind as the object of worship in preference to the worship of God himself, remains a riddle, in that account bringing no satisfaction to a deep-thinking mind. This difficulty set me thinking over the matter in all its aspects and in all its relations to the rites and ceremonies that are being conducted in the Siva temples, so that I came to hit upon a clue to the real meaning of it when I observed the rite in which the temple fire was kindled while the cone shaped linga was being set up in the central pit of a circular stone and at the end of the ritual, ashes were distributed to the worshippers. Then it struck me that the intimate relation of ashes to the cult could not have signified anything but the worship of fire transferred to a cone-shaped object which resembles flame while it burns tapering up to a point in the form of a cone. In many ancient temples fire was kindled night and day and the light was never allowed to go out even for a second; and this custom still prevails in all the celebrated Siva temples as well as in the Parsi sanctuaries where this is observed with particular care (See J. G. Frazer).

[...]

The Original Home of Man was the Tamil Land

From the time I read the ancient Tamil classics I came to have a dim notion that the present Tamil country in the South of India could not have been more than a remnant of a vast continent now sunk in the Indian Ocean. In the prefatory poem appended to the very ancient Tamil grammar and rhetoric the “ Tholkappiam Tholkappiyam ” (which is nearly 5000 years old) it is expressly stated that the composition of that great work took place when 'Kumari Nadu'  [குமரிநாடு] the vast southern continent, was in existence. And in the sublime epic Tamil poem the Silappatikaram which was composed in the second century A. D the same fact is stated with some more details, by means of which we come to know that that continent contained a mountain range called ‘Kumarikkodu’ [குமரிக்கொடு] and a river called ‘Pahruli' [பஃறுளி] which watered some forty-nine provinces into which the habitable parts of which had been divided and the extent of which is mentioned to have been 700 kavatham [காவதம்].

Whether the calculated extent was in breadth or length or in square, whether a kavatham meant two miles or ten miles, we have no means to determine. Still from what is stated in the text and commentary of the great Tamil epic, it is quite clear that the submerged continent must have been a very large one at any rate. Possessed with this idea of a submerged continent in the south, I was kindled with a strong desire to know whether this could be proved by the sciences of geology and Physical Geography, Biology and Ethnology and began in my nineteenth year to apply myself to a careful study of authoritative works on these sciences. In the course of my study I happened to read the very interesting and profoundly scientific work entitled ‘‘History of Creation” written by the eminent biologist Ernst Heckel [Ernst Haeckel]. In this great work I came across the portion dealing with this vast continent as the cradle of human race and I quote his very words below:

This large continent of former times Scalater [Sclater], an English man, has called ‘Lemuria’ from the monkeylike animals which inhabited it, and it is at the same time of great importance from being the probable cradle of the human race” (Vol I 1876, Pp. 360-361)

‘‘There are a number of circumstances (especially chronological) which suggest that the primeval home of man was a continent now sung below the surface of the Indian Ocean which extended along the South of Asia, as it is at present (and probably in direct connection with it) towards the east, as far as further India and the Sunda Islands, towards the west as far as Madagascar and the south-eastern shores of Africa." Vol. II 1876, Pp. 825-326).

These statements of a famous scientist, furnishing as it does indisputable evidence to substantiate what was mentioned in the ancient Tamil Classics as regards the prior existence of a great southern continent, further impelled me to pursue my studies in this respect to see whether any other scientists have investigated this point and said anything for or against it. It gives me great satisfaction to find such able and illustrious scientists as Alfred Russel Wallace, Thomas Huxley, H. F. Blanford, Lord Avebury and H. G. Wells have dealt with it in greater detail so as to corroborate what Heckel stated concerning the pre-existence of the vast Southern continent as the primeval home of man. If any additional evidence be required to prove that vital fact from modern day science, the very recent utterance of a living scientist as H. G. Wells would afford it. In the “Outline of History’’ he says :—

"Man was fully man when he entered America. The old world was the nursery of the sub-races of mankind. Some where between South Africa and the East Indies and the Mediterranean these sub-races worked out their destinies, as lands rose and sank, and forests gave place to desert and desert to forest. It may have been where now the Indian Ocean extends” (Fifth revision, 1930.)

The Original Tongue of Man was Tamil

Now, it is manifest that scientists are unanimous in holding that the submerged continent called Kumari Nadu by the ancient Tamils and Lemuria by the modern scientists, constituted the only primeval home of man when he first made his appearance on this globe. This extensive region in which the equator lies was watered by two large streams called Kumari and Pahruli and rendered possible the existence of man by the fertility of its soil and temperate climate and by the abundant products of luscious fruits, edible roots and plants. The language spoken there by the first man was Tamil, since there is no reference to this continent in any other literature than that of Tamil. A great Tamil work was composed for commemorating the expedition and exploits of the monarch ‘Sengon who ruled in that great land and, though it was unfortunately lost, yet a few verses of it with commentary recently discovered, conclusively prove that the language spoken and cultivated by its inhabitants, archaic though it was in some respects, is not wholly different from the Tamil of subsequent ages, nor is it incomprehensible as the vedic language is to one acquainted with the later Sanscrit. The people who spoke Tamil at that remote age must have been at the stage of childhood, that is, what a child of six or seven years old is in, when the vocal organs are not being trained to pronounce artificial sounds with effort. The child utters only those words and syllables that come to it naturally and easily. All those artificial vowel and consonantal sounds found in other languages are entirely absent in Tamil. This is one vital reason why most of the ancient languages that had artificial and unnatural vowels and consonants to pronounce have ceased to be used popularly, whereas Tamil alone which has none of such hard consonants, sibilants and aspirates has continued to live in all its vigour even after fifteen or twenty thousand years from its beginnings. Further, in Tamil no consonantal sound can stand at the beginning of a word without combining with a vowel; for instance, the word ‘Christ’ should not be pronounced in Tamil as it is in English, but should be changed into ‘Kirithu’ [கிறித்து] according to the phonetic law in Tamil. I was long thinking why this and other such changes of foreign words should be made necessary as they come to be used in Tamil, when I happened to have an occasion to observe the natural law that led to such change. While I was on a visit to a European gentleman, I saw some children playing in his compound. They were all between six and seven years old and being all of English extraction had little acquaintance with any Tamil children and spoke English only. In conversing with each other one pronounced the word ‘Christ’ not in the English fashion but as ‘Kirithu’. This natural pronunciation of a nature's child impressed me so strongly that ever since that time I interested myself by attending diligently to the manner by which foreign words are pronounced by the children, women and unlettered men of Tamilian stock in their natural state and was struck by the invariable Tamil fashion with which foreign words are uttered by them. It is his natural phenomenon of the human speech exhibited in the incipient stage of its formation that has preserved Tamil as a living language even after an immensely long period of twenty thousand years whereas a series of many hundred languages came into existence as well as went out of existence in a few decades. From what we have learnt from such linguistic appearance and disappearance of countless tongues that had occurred in the long past, we may safely predict that Tamil alone being the natural outcome of human needs, when the human beings were in the natural stage of children beginning to express their wants in simple sounds which in course of time came to form words and phrases, will live as long as man will live, while all other languages being of an artificial character will pass away in due time- I desist from dwelling on this point further on, since the author of the following treatise has recounted in a clear and succinct manner almost all the merits which Tamil possesses for being made the common language not only of India but of the whole world.

The Southern Submerged Continent The Birth Place of Man and Tamil

As shown above the southern submerged continent “Kumari Nadu” or ‘Lemuria’ forming as it does the first dwelling place of the human beings and the language first spoken by them being Tamil only, it becomes now easy for us to explain how so much diversity in race and language as is seen at present have come to prevail all over this globe. When this great continent existed, all the northern parts of India including the Himalayan section was covered by the Rajaputana sea; but owing to some natural cataclysm that often occurs in this physical world, the Rajaputana sea happened ages ago to be dried up by such an upheaval of its bed as to cause its waters to flood the south swallowing up portions of great extent of this Lemurian continent once, twice and thrice as is mentioned in the ancient Tamil classics “Tholkappiam,” ‘Kalithokai’ and ‘Silappadhikaram’. It was at that terrible occurrence that there came the urgent need for the human beings who all along lived as one indivisible family, to be split up into many groups and migrate in haste in different directions to places of safety in the north, east, and west. Those who went to the farthest corners lived out of all touch with their original brethren of the Tamil land and fared civilized or uncivilized as the nature of the soil, climate and surroundings tended to influence them.

The civilized tribes possessing here and there among them intelligent persons who took interest in learning the history of their forefathers, had entreated them to recite for their entertainment the accounts of their original home and how they came to leave it and migrate to their new dwelling places and in response to their entreaties their bards who mostly depended on them for their livelihood took up the theme of their history and produced epic poems to be sung or recited on festive occasions and other national rejoicings. In this way arose the composition of epic and dramatic poems among civilized races who, as time went on, however changed in their speech, customs and manners, still retained a greater or less quantity not only of the words of their forefathers’ speech, but also their customs and manners as the condition of their culture necessitated. As the whole of human beings were one individual unit so long as they lived in the great southern continent ‘Kumari Nadu’, they could not completely forget their original relationship even after their unfortunate and unforeseen separation into innumerable groups and sections. As has been shown by Dr. Caldwell in his monumental, and profoundly philological work ; “ A Comparative Grammar of the Dravidian Languages,’’ the words and phrases of the Tamil language can be seen infixed and inwoven in the ancient and prehistoric linguistic fabric of all cultured languages all over the world. As all the multitudinous languages came into being after the one great human family who spoke only one language, Tamil, quitted its original home and dispersed into various parts of the globe and settled down there, the dispersed groups naturally carried with them their Tamil speech. Except among  those who sedulously cultivate their language by producing literary and religious compositions in them, phonetic decay, as illustratively proved by professors Max Muller and Sayce, affects the languages of others and change them to such an extent as to efface completely all traces of their relationship to the parent speech. But in the cultivated languages, even when they have undergone changes to an inordinate degree as in the case of the Aryan and Semitic families of languages, a careful student of this branch of study cannot fail to detect the elusive existence of Tamilian elements. ButTamil, being the language prior to the formation of all other languages no words or phrases of these others, can be so detected in the ancient Tamil poetry of the pre-Buddhistic times. Although the ancient Tamil grammar the Tholkappiam admits the use of some Aryan words in the Tamil literary compositions, they are far from being the original elements in its structure. It is even doubtful whether they are really Aryan, since the Aryan tongue itself evolved from Tamil after its separation from its primitive home. On the other hand, as shown by Dr. Caldwell, a large number of pure primitive Tamil words are found interspersed in the old vedic dialect of the Aryan people. Does not this alone constitute the significant proof for establishing the fact that Tamil only stands as the parent speech of all tongues which came into existence all over the world after the submergence of the great southern continent “ Kumari Nadu ” or Lemuria ?

Summary and concluding remarks

So far our observations based on evidence afforded by the ancient Tamil classics and modern Western Science lead us to conclude that the first appearance of man on this globe took place in the vast southern continent that lay on the two sides of the equator, the greater portion of it stretching southwards as far as the South Pole and towards east and west as far as Australia and even farther and as far as South Africa; that the language spoken by the first man was Tamil; and that the religion he professed was either the worship of Light itself as God or the vehicle of God; that when the submergence of the southern part of this great land occurred the one great human family that lived there dispersed in different directions going to the north, north-east and north-west and some groups settling in places suitable for civilized life and others in parts not conducive to such life; that it is this dispersion of the original human family into different groups and into different situations that accounts for the immense variety which at present prevails in the human features, speeches, customs and manners; and that notwithstanding this variety certain original elements of the Tamilian life and Tamilian speech have left their indelible prints in it to show their primitive Unity to a discerning intelligence.

Now, in order to resuscitate the much needed primitive unity among the existing variety of humanity, their language and their religion, nothing can serve better than to spread the culture of their original and still living language Tamil and their religion which consists in worshipping Light alone as God and bringing light to all who are immersed in intellectual darkness.

Let this grand, magnificent and unifying truth of the Tamilian faith be brought home to our leaders and rulers who do not seem to possess even a hundredth part of the knowledge of Tamil which the western scholars like Abbe Dubois, Dr. Caldwell, Dr. G. U. Pope, Professor Max Muller and others possessed. I hope the following work by Mr. K. Appadurai Pillai would furnish the key to solve the much disputed language problem not only of India but of the whole world and reinstate the study of Tamil among all people so as to bring them all together to live as one brotherhood as in the primitive times and spend their days in peace and happiness."

[a.a.O., S. xiii - xvii ; xxi - xxxii]

1948-06-17

New Delhi (Hindi नई दिल्ली): Die Constituent Assembly bildet eine Linguistic Provinces Commission (Dhar Commission) zur Frage der Bildung von Provinzen auf Grundlage der Hauptsprache.

"On 17 June 1948, Rajendra Prasad, the President of the Constituent Assembly, set up the Linguistic Provinces Commission (aka Dhar Commission) to recommend whether the states should be reorganised on linguistic basis or not. The committee included

In its 10 December 1948 report, the Commission recommended that

"the formation of provinces on exclusively or even mainly linguistic considerations is not in the larger interests of the Indian nation." 

It recommended the reorganisation of the provinces of MadrasBombay and Central Provinces and Berar primarily on the basis of geographical contiguity, financial self-sufficiency and ease of administration.

Soon after the report was published, the Congress, at its Jaipur session, set up the "JVP committee" to study the recommendations of the Dhar Commission. The committee, comprised Jawaharlal Nehru and Vallabhbhai Patel, in addition to the Congress president Pattabhi Sitaramayya. In its report dated 1 April 1949, the Committee stated that the time was not suitable for formation of new provinces, but also stated that the

"public sentiment is insistent and overwhelming, we, as democrats, have to submit to it, but subject to certain limitations in regard to the good of India as a whole.""

[Quelle: States Reorganisation Commission - Wikipedia. -- Zugriff am 2021-09-03. -- CC-BY-SA]

1948-07

Madras (Tamil மதராஸ்): Anti-Hindi Conference

1948-11-05

T. T. Krishnamachari (Tamil தி. த. கிருஷ்ணமாச்சாரி - Ti. Ta. Kiruṣṇamāccāri, 1899 - 1974) in der Constituent Assembly:

"We disliked the English language in the past. I disliked it because I was forced to learn Shakespeare and Milton, for which I had no taste at all . . . [I]f we are going to be compelled to learn Hindi . . . I would perhaps not be able to do it because of my age, and perhaps I would not be willing to do it because of the amount of constraint you put on me . . . This kind of intolerance makes us fear that the strong Centre which we need, a strong Centre which is necessary will also mean the enslavement of people who do not speak the language of the Centre. I would, Sir, convey a warning on behalf of people of the South for the reason that there are already elements in South India who want separation . . ., and my honourable friends in U.P. do not help us in anyway by flogging their idea [of] ‘Hindi Imperialism’ to the maximum extent possible. Sir, it is up to my friends in U.P. to have a whole-India; it is up to them to have a Hindi-India. The choice is theirs . . ."

[Quelle: Guha, Ramachandra [रामचंद्र गुहा] <1958 - >: India after Gandhi : The history of the world's largest democracy. -- Revised and updated ed. -- London : Macmillan, 2017. -- S. 119. -- Fair use]

1950

Madras (Tamil மதராஸ் ; Telugu మద్రాస్): Es erscheint:

R. P. Sethu Pillai (Tamil ரா. பி. சேதுப்பிள்ளை - Rā. Pi. Cētuppiḷḷai, 1896 - 1961): கடற்கரையினிலே - Kaṭaṟkaraiyiṉilē  [On the seashore]. -- Madras : Star, 1950

"The last of these reveries comes from the pen of R.P. Sethu Pillai (1896-1961), reputed essayist and Professor of Tamil at the University of Madras. In Sethu Pillai’s place-making, it is the venerable poet-sage Ilango Adigal, author of the classic narrative poem Cilappatikaram who interrogates “the cruel sea” on a visit to the Cape [Kap Komorin]. As Ilango looks out at the sea, his face, which had been “aglow with the light of Tamil,” clouds over with sorrow, and his eyes fill up with tears:

Oh! Kumari Sea! When I see you, my heart surges with distress. Your breeze fans the hot embers of my body! Alas! O wave-filled ocean! What did our dear precious land do to you?

Speaking through Ilango, Sethu Pillai charges “the mischievous ocean” with destroying not just the antediluvian cities and rivers of the Tamil realm, but also for bringing distress to the famed Pandyan kings who magnanimously ruled over that ancient continent, nurturing the Tamil language and literature:

O mischievous ocean! You consumed so many towns belonging to the Pandyan king! You drank up so many rivers! You swallowed so many mountains! .. . Our Pandyan shed tears when he learned that you had destroyed [the Pahruli] river. Even today I can hear the sound of his crying in your breeze! Is this your only cruelty? You also swallowed the river Kumari. . . . Alas! You ate up our land! You drank up our rivers! You consumed our mountains!

Like Mutthuvirasami and Paramasivanandam, Sethu Pillai, too, lamented that because of the ocean’s cruelty,

“the Tamil land has shrunk. My heart grieves . . .”"

[Quelle: Sumathi Ramaswamy [சுமதி ராமஸ்வாமி]: The lost land of Lemuria : Fabulous geographies, catastrophic histories. -- Berkeley : Univ. of California Pr., 2004. -- 334 S. : Ill. -- S. 141f. -- Fair use]

1950-05-02

Madras State: Hindi wird Pflichtfach in Klasse 1 bis 6 aller Schulen. Landesweite Proteste.

"On 2 May 1950, Congress minister Madhava Menon announced that Hindi would be a compulsory language from standards 1 to 6 in all schools. A massive agitation began once again and this time it was larger than the first one. The DMK [Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam], with over 50,000 members and 700 branches, had turned into an army. Led by Anna [C. N. Annadurai], anti-Hindi protests rocked the state. Jails were filled and DMK cadre were beaten by the police. Such was the pressure that within two months of the rule, Menon was forced to modify his statement: Hindi was now not compulsory but only a voluntary subject.

Protests, though, continued - in railway stations, against the use of Hindi on trains and in front of shops owned by north Indians. DMK and DK [Dravidar Kazhagam] men applied tar over the Hindi words written on trains in an attempt to show their opposition. In Trichy, Periyar and Karunanidhi together blacked out the Hindi names on the trains and the station. As the DMK marched behind Karunanidhi, shouting slogans, a car pulled up next to them and Periyar warmly wished Karunanidhi.

 'Despite having parted ways with bitterness into two parties, this sudden encounter showed me that the affection and love had not diminished in the least,’ writes Karunanidhi.

The DMK under Anna, and the DK under Periyar, protested for the same cause but separately. Periyar won many victories in this time. He got caste names removed from railway canteens and from establishments across the state."

[Quelle: Sandhya Ravishankar (Tamil சந்தியா ரவிசங்கர்): Karunanidhi : A life in politics. -- HarperCollins, 2019. -- Kindle ed. -- Fair use]

1950-08-13

Madras (Tamil மதராஸ்): Öffentlicher Aufruf von Periyar E. V. Ramasamy (Tamil ஈ. வெ. இராமசாமி, 1879 - 1973) zu einem Hartal zur Unterstützung des Communal G. O. (Government Order) (Siehe The State Of Madras vs Srimathi Champakam ... on 9 April, 1951 (indiankanoon.org)):

"I issued an appeal to observe ‘Hartal’ (An agitation by closure of all shops) tomorrow (14.08.1950) completely. I appealed to the students to abstain from attending the schools and colleges. I appealed to the merchants and businessmen to keep their shops closed tomorrow. I appealed to all the people in our State to participate in the procession in large numbers to demonstrate the public opinion in support of the Communal G.O. [1921-09-16]

[...]

When such being the state of affairs in the North, here in South India those who are ninety percent of the total population have somehow forfeited their rights in all walks of life and almost all the posts were monopolised by a particular community called Brahmins which was, after all only 3% of the population. The majority (Dravidians) was dominated by the minority (Aryans) here. Their fate is very pitiable. They are very backward in all walks of life.

Sir P. Theagaraya was a very powerful Congressman and he was the secretary of the Congress session held at Madras. Till 1916, Sir P Theagaraya and Dr. T. M. Nair, a versatile scholar and public worker were not in terms. They were opposed to each other. They realized that by their mutual quarrels and enmity, Brahmins were gaining against the interests of the non-brahmins. They both realized that Brahmins were foaming up bitterness among them to exploit that situation in favour of the Brahmins. They both resolved to forget the bitter past and united together and laid the foundation for the Non-Brahmin movement. Since they had no courage to call themselves as Dravidians they named the movement as the ‘South Indian Liberal Federation’ which was popularly known later as the Justice Party. As the principles of the S.I.L.F. were very reasonable and just, the movement gained the popular support of the Non-Brahmins. They participated in the first elections held in 1920 and scored a resounding victory. I was in the Congress party at that time.

The Brahmins in the Congress party were terribly jealous of the growing popularity of the Justice party (S.L.I.F). They had to counteract the growing influence of the Non-Brahmins in the political sphere. They sought the advice of Mr. Gandhi. At that time, Mrs. Annie Besant was very popular in Indian Politics. The reasons for her popularity was that she was a foreigner and her services were mainly to the advancement of the Brahmin community. Yet the Iyengar Brahmins hated her, because it was the Iyer community that was much benefited by her services. She ignored the Iyenger Brahmins and encouraged the Iyers. Sadasiva Iyer, Mani Iyer, Sir. C. P. Ramasami enjoyed the favour of Mrs. Annie Besant. This was hated by the Iyengars. They feared that the Saivite Brahmins would supersede them. They were afraid that the Saivite Brahmins would one day monopolise all fields leaving the Vaisnavites in the back waters. They resolved to seek a new leader who would work for their welfare. They chose Mr. C. Rajagopalachari, who was considered a clever person. They went to Mr. Gandhi for his advice and consent. It is in this way that Rajagopalachari (Rajaji) became the leader of Brahmins. For what Gandhi has done to Rajaji he made Mr. Gandhi a very big leader in South India. It is at that time, I joined the Congress party under the persuasion of Rajaji. The constructive programme of the Congress was very much appealing to me. It attracted a large number of people of eminence towards the Congress party. Many became the followers of Gandhi.

What are the things Gandhi preached to us?

  1. First, Hindu - Muslim unity.

  2. Second the eradication of untouchability.

  3. Third, the Khaddar cloth scheme for the uplift of the poor.

  4. Fourth, the prohibition.

Apart from these Gandhi stated clearly that Congress party would not seek any post by contesting the elections. I sincerely believed that the Congress is primarily a Social Reform Movement. I worked for the Congress very sincerely. Naturally the Congress became very popular.

When the Justice party won the elections and formed the cabinet, the Congress carried on intensive anti-propaganda. The Congress did not reckon the good works of the Justice party as great. They stooped to follow very cheap politics. They had lowered their political levels. They attacked the Justice party unnecessarily. They made a big fuss about the salary of the ministers. They heckled them for travelling in the first class by train. They talked of their eye glasses, caps, etc. By these, they wanted to win the hearts of the poor people. They posed as if they were the only champions of the poor. By these methods they managed to dupe the public and in 1926 elections the Justice party faced a defeat in the elections.

[...]

Today marks are taken as the scale for measuring the talents. Can it be said that those who score high marks are the only intelligent? After all more marks are obtained by merely memorising. We know how marks are obtained. Soon after the examination is over, people go with money to places where the answer papers are corrected. Are not our ministers aware of this? Why, some of them might have passed this way!. People are aware that marks could be purchased for money. It is not open secret Brahmin boys are helped in many ways. Brahmin teachers help them. Our boys know only to go to the Vinayaka temple after the exam. The Brahmin boys do not go. They go to their teachers, examiners who are mostly of their own community. Under these circumstances is it right to determine the talents basing the marks obtained?

In Russia students are given education for a certain period. They are tested. After training they are given jobs. Doing a job well is the test there. It is only here examinations are made difficult. It is not so in other countries. Students are put to severe hardship here in the name of examinations.

[...]

Why should we have a government at Delhi which does not do anything for us? Can we not rule ourselves? Does our country lack in natural resources? We have a coast line of 1500 miles. Our ships can go to any part of the world. We have railways. Can we not flourish? Why should we give away our rights and powers to Delhi? When they are there as ministers, we are naturally exploited. What if we have a government of our own? They do not give due respect even to our Tamil Nadu ministers here. Dr.A.L.Mudaliar gave a clean breast of the affair in the debates of the Legislative Council. Even our ministers have accepted the fact many times.

In India, the North is ignoring the South. South is being exploited. Why should we be suppressed? If we had powers in our hands, we would have solved our problems. To solve the food shortage, we could have directly imported food grains from abroad. Today we, the Tamil Nadu people, do not have the powers. The Government of India procure food grains and take them here and there and by the time we get our quota they are almost unfit for consumption. North Indians are suffering here. They are playing. Why should this situation be allowed? Should we not sacrifice even our life and gain full freedom? Let us redeem our land of Dravida Naadu.

The present agitation is not an agitation for mere communal G.O. It will lead us to agitate for the separation of Dravidanadu. Rajaji’s imposition of Hindi made the Tamils unite and solidly demonstrate the solidarity of Tamils. Similarly by the present agitation, we will consolidate our strength against the dominant and exploiting Aryans. With zeal and vigour we will get our motherland. We will rule ourselves. We will soon be free to solve our problems.

So I appeal to you all to get ready for playing your role in the agitation."

[Quelle: COLLECTED WORKS OF PERIYAR E.V.R. (thesatyashodhak.com). -- Fair use]

1950-09-15

Madras (Tamil மதராஸ்): Tod von Maraimalai_Adigal  (Tamil மறைமலை அடிகள் - Maṟaimalai Aṭikaḷ, 1876 - 1950), Ideologe des Neo Shaivism


Abb.: Briefmarke, 2007
[Wikimedia / GODL]

"“In my dreams and in my thoughts, I forever think about Tamil and Shaivism. May the Lord offer me grace so that I continue to think about them” (Anbupalam Ni 1967: 56).

So declared Maraimalai Adigal in a public meeting in Madras in 1949 at the end of a life dedicated to the task of publicizing the glories of Tamil. Years before, in 1912, during the early years of his career while he was travelling to numerous small towns all over the Presidency as well as Sri Lanka to spread the message of Shaivism and Tamil, he noted in his diary:

“I am leading a life happier than that of a prince” (quoted in M. Tirunavukarasu 1959: 130).

Service to Shaivism and to Tamil appears to have been the motto of Maraimalai’s “princely” life. A devotee with ardent faith in the power of reform, Maraimalai made full use of the modernist technologies of print, associations, and public lectures to convert his fellow speakers into devotees of Tamil.

Maraimalai’s use of such technologies of publicity, which were much favored by many reformers all across colonial India, may be traced back to his early youth. Growing up in the coastal town of Nagapattinam, he founded the Intu Matapimanam Cankam [இந்து மதாபிமானம் சங்கம்] (Society for Pride in Hindu Religion) to combat missionary attacks on Hinduism in 1892 when he was sixteen. At this time, he was an ardent believer in Vedantic and Sanskritic Hinduism (Nambi Arooran 1976: 312-13). Within a few years, however, he came under the influence of the well-known scholar Somasundara Nayakar (1846-1901), on whom he subsequently wrote a biography, and was converted to the latter’s philosophy of Shaiva Siddhanta. In 1897, as a young man, he had his first encounter with the power of print when he published several essays defending his mentor’s version of Shaivism against Vedantic detractors (M. Tirunavukarasu 1959: 4-19). A year later, he secured regular employment as a Tamil teacher in Madras Christian College. This did not stop him from continuing with his proselytizing activities, using weekends as well as his vacation days to give public lectures on Shaivism and Tamil; to publish his researches on Cankam poems; and to establish reform societies such as the Caiva Cittanta Maka Samajam [சைவ சித்தாந்த மகா சமாஜம்] (Society for Shaiva Siddhanta), founded in 1905, and the Camaraca Canmarkka Nilaiyam [சமரச சன்மார்க்க நிலையம்] (Sacred Order of Love), founded in 1911 (Nambi Arooran 1976: 319-27).

Maraimalai’s diaries and letters offer interesting glimpses of the lives of those devotees who turned into publicists and reformers dedicated to the Tamil cause. They formed associations, published books and journals, and organized literary conferences to spread the message of Tamil. These conferences were festive occasions marked by religious hymns and popular songs on Tamil, speeches on the wonders of its literature, and debates about how to go about restoring the language to its former glory. Speakers like Maraimalai were treated particularly well. On one occasion, when he visited Salem, he was taken in procession around the town and greeted by local notables; he then gave a talk for about an hour and a quarter on “the nobility and antiquity of Tamil.” His talk was followed by discussions and lectures by other scholars and devotees (M. Tirunavukarasu 1959: 700-702). Yet it is also clear from his son’s account, as well as from the reminiscences of others, that Maraimalai was a demanding publicist for the Tamil cause. Fellow devotee K. A. P. Viswanatham recalls that after being invited to address the annual conference of the Shaiva Siddhanta association of Tiruchirappalli in 1921, Maraimalai presented a formidable list of demands which included detailed specifications on his lodging, provisions for worship and for his food, as well as payment of two hundred silver coins. When asked,

“How many will invite you if you ask so much for service to Tamil and to Shaivism?”

Maraimalai acerbically replied that while his fellow Tamilians were willing to heap thousands on actors and singers, they refuse to similarly honor Tamil scholars (Viswanatham 1989: 15-17). For Maraimalai, the honoring—both materially and otherwise—of speakers like himself was the honoring of Tamil itself.

His speeches certainly appear to have influenced at least one young man to convert to the Tamil cause. R. P. Sethu Pillai, who later became professor of Tamil in Madras University and published numerous books and essays on Tamil and its literature, many of them Indianist and compensatory classicist in sentiment, recalls a public lecture on Tamil that Maraimalai gave in the small town of Palayamkottai in June 1912. Tirunavukarasu, to whom Sethu Pillai talked later about this event, describes the impact of Maraimalai’s speech on the young man:

“His being pulsed with the consciousness of Tamil. ‘I, too, will learn this great Tamil. I, too, will spread Tamil by lecturing and by offering my services,’ he thought to himself” (M. Tirunavukarasu 1959: 162-63).

Maraimalai appears to have been paid well for his speeches. Much of the money he made on these lecture tours was ploughed back into his publication and reform activities. In a 1941 letter to a friend, he observes,

“I have spent an enormous amount of wealth on Tamil” (Anbupalam Ni 1967: 24-26).

Yet, like the majority of Tamil’s devotees, he appears to have led a life of only middling prosperity, and the prefaces to his various books as well his letters contain frequent references to the financial hardship that he faced in continuing with his publication efforts, to the lack of appreciation for his work, and so on. Nonetheless, he worked on tirelessly, beginning most days at the crack of dawn with prayers and going to bed past midnight (Anbupalam Ni 1967: 49-51).

In 1911, at the age of thirty-five and as the sole breadwinner for his family—consisting of his aged mother, his wife, and seven children— Maraimalai decided to give up his teaching career and become an ascetic instead. In doing so, his son tells us, he was following an age-old tradition:

“Having dedicated himself to the cause of Shaivism and Tamil, he donned the ascetic’s robes and the lifestyle of a renouncer” (M. Tirunavukarasu 1959: 128).

At least in his son’s reckoning, Maraimalai’s act was justifiable, his dedication to the cause of Shaivism and Tamil overriding his family responsibilities. Indeed, it is as an ascetic that Maraimalai entered the most productive period of his career as Tamil devotee; these were the “golden years of his life” (Tirunavukarasu 1959: 481). He published prodigiously and his books sold well; there were numerous requests for his presence as inaugural speaker at conferences; he became a member of the local vegetarian society and led campaigns against the performance of animal sacrifices in rural and low-caste temples. Scholars and admirers thronged to visit his home in Pallavaram, a suburb of Madras where he had taken up residence after becoming an ascetic.

“Ah! How many people are now filled with Tamil devotion! They are filled with pride in their community. My work has had its impact. In the future, my books will sell abundantly, and my thoughts will spread far and wide. Tamil will flourish! Shaivism will triumph!” he remarked in contentment to his son in the 1940s (M. Tirunavukarasu 1959: 836-37; Anbupalam Ni 1967: 25).

Above all, these were the years in which he earnestly pursued the taṉittamiḻ [தனித்தமிழ் - pure Tamil]  cause, republishing pure Tamil versions of his early essays and striving to create a language that would be as free of Sanskrit words as possible. He refused to lend the prestige of his name to any publication that did not conform to his notion of Tamil, and periodically he had public disputations with fellow scholars on the purity of their language. Indeed, though his livelihood partly depended on the remuneration he received from speaking at conferences, he refused (in a letter he wrote in English)

“to attend any Tamil meeting which is not willing to maintain and advance pure Tamil. Of all the Cultivated ancient Languages, Tamil is the only one which is still living in all its pristine glory. I am strongly convinced that any mixture of foreign words in it will tend to vitiate its healthy life and hamper its vigorous growth. Please, therefore, excuse me for not attending your conference which does not seem to meet my ideal” (quoted in Ilankumaran 1991: 127).

In his personal life as well, his son tells us, he attempted to meet his ideals. After 1912, he refused to allow the participation of Brahman priests in the domestic rituals performed at home, deeming this a non-Tamil practice; after 1916, he attempted to speak only in pure Tamil; in the shrine that he built in his home in 1931 in Pallavaram, worship was offered only in Tamil; and he was a devout Shaivite, regularly visiting Shaiva temples where he would sing Tamil hymns to his heart’s content and, we are told, would bring tears of joy to all those who heard him.

All the same, his devotion, like that of so many others, was not without its share of contradictions. Later in his life he was neutral, even hostile, to the cause of Indian nationalism, but in his early years, according to his diary entries, he composed nationalist songs, attended nationalist lectures, and even wrote in 1906 that he bought a bundle of swadeshi (nationalist) candles (M. Tirunavukarasu and Venkatachalapathy 1988: 25-30). On the incarceration of the nationalist leader Tilak, his diary entry in English dated 23 July 1907 reads,

“Oh! Mother India! Are thy sons to suffer thus!” (Anbupalam Ni 1967: 40).

At the same time, he also composed songs commemorating George V’s accession in 1911 and joined the celebrations in Pallavaram marking that occasion. In 1912, noting that the government probably had him under surveillance, he comments on the stupidity of this, for he was after only a preacher, and he writes that he desired British rule to continue (M. Tirunavukarasu and Venkatachalapathy 1988: 35-36).

He may have spent much of his public life castigating Sanskrit for its evils, but unlike those in a later generation of Tamil devotees who criticized the language without any knowledge of it, Maraimalai had formally learned Sanskrit and even translated from it into Tamil a well-known play, Shakuntala. In his later published writings, he may have ardently preached the inherent superiority of Shaiva Siddhanta, but in his diaries he expresses admiration for Vivekananda’s Vedantic teachings and even gave a public lecture in 1909 on the Bhagavad Gita’s importance in modernity (M. Tirunavukarasu and Venkatachalapathy 1988: 32-33). Indeed, although in a large number his writings on Tamil he may appear a classicist, in his own personal reading habits he appreciated a good number of modern works written in other languages. His love for English offers another similar contradiction. He seems to have spent a good part of his limited funds on purchasing English books to stock his personal library, and he translated numerous English classics into Tamil. His son tells us that on his many lecture tours and pilgrimages, he would carry along with him as reading material English books, rather than Tamil. He maintained his personal diary in English. When asked about this, he told his son,

“My thoughts, speech, and writing are all in Tamil. To ensure that my knowledge of English does not fade away, I write my daily diary in English” (M. Tirunavukarasu 1959: 700).

Such contradictions lasted until the end; when he died in September 1950, he requested that his body be cremated rather than buried in what had been deemed the authentic Tamil style (Viswanatham 1989: 22)."

[Quelle: Sumathi Ramaswamy [சுமதி ராமஸ்வாமி]: Passions of tongue : Language devotion in Tamil India 1891 - 1970. -- Berkeley : Univ. of California Pr., 1997. -- S. 215 - 219. -- Fair use]

1951-08-15 - 1951-09-20

Erster Hungerstreik von Swami Sitaram (Telugu స్వామి సీతారాం - Svāmi Sītārāṁ = Gollapudi Sitaram Sastry - Telugu గొల్లపూడి సీతారామశాస్త్రి - Gollapūḍi sītārāmaśāstri) für einen Andhra-Staat.

"G Sitaramasastry, as Swami Sitaram was known before he became an ascetic, was a staunch Congress worker, and was the Secretary of the APCC [Andhra Pradesh Congress Committee] in its early days, and a close associate of Konda Venkatappayya, who passed away on 15 August 1949. He wanted to continue Venkatappayya’s work for the creation of an Andhra Province. So he had written to Nehru 4 or 5 times, each time demanding the formation of Andhra Province within six months. On 16 June 1951 he addressed letters to the Government of Madras, the President of India, the Prime Minister and other leaders asking for an assurance, before 15 August, that the Andhra State would be formed. In the absence of such an assurance, he stated, he would fast unto death or resort to any other suitable step. It is possible that Nehru did not expect that people would resort to extra constitutional ways like fasting or satyagraha for the formation of an Andhra Province. Sitaram received replies from nobody and so began a fast unto death from 16 August 1951.

As a believer in Sarvodaya, he wanted a cheaper and more efficient administration carried on in the mother-tongue of the people. He believed that the early formation of the province before the elections would ensure the success of the Congress and any postponement or delay would be taken advantage of by other parties to defeat the Congress. He was afraid that the election manifesto of 1951, containing references to linguistic States, would meet the same fate as the manifesto of 1946 and that there might be little scope for the formation of linguistic provinces after the elections. There was not much diffidence in substance between the views of Swami Sitaram and the demands made by Prakasam in his dissenting note. He wanted an Andhra State with areas under the APCC jurisdiction before 2 October and arbitration on all disputed points before or after the inauguration of the Andhra State, preferably after. The status of Madras, a cosmopolitan city, should be definitely and finally settled at least within three years after the general elections. Till then, neither the Andhra State nor the Tamil State should ask for its inclusion or division or for compensation in respect of a part or whole thereof He suggested President Rajendra Prasad or Nehru as arbitrators and, if they could not find time, Vinoba Bhave, the spiritual heir of Gandhiji. could be entrusted with the task. An All-Party Convention met at Bezwada and endorsed the demands of Swami Sitaram Prominent members of the APCC showed little enthusiasm for this convention possibly because they held that the organisers of the Convention were supporters of Prakasam who had left the Congress by then.

Nehru was entirely opposed to fasting as a method of finding a solution for political problems and felt, in this particular case, it was ‘specially uncalled for'. He wanted a wide measure of agreement on the principal questions involved though he did not mean that everybody should agree on everything. Many of them felt that it was a critical moment. Grave dangers were threatening the country and the elections were to take place. It was not the proper time for taking steps to this end. Yet, if the people concerned were willing and desirous, the government was perfectly prepared to go ahead with the matter."

[Quelle: K. V. Narayana Rao (1934 - ): The emergence of Andhra Pradesh. -- Bombay : Popular Prakashan, 1973. -- 350 S. -- S. 236ff. -- Online: The emergence of Andhra Pradesh : Narayana Rao, K. V., 1934- : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive. -- Fair use]

1952-12-29

Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru  (Hindi जवाहरलाल नेहरू, 1889 - 1964) kündigt die Bildung eines Telugu-Staats (Andhra Pradesh) an

1953

Kundrakudi Adigal (Tamil குன்றக்குடி அடிகள் - Kuṉṟakkuṭi aṭikaḷ, 1925 - 1995):

"Neo-Shaivism and Dravidianism, contrary ideologies though they may be, thus came together to support tamil aruccanai [தமிழ் அருச்சனை- worship in Tamil], united by their common cause against Brahmans and Sanskrit. Ironically, however, the neo-Shaiva agenda for instituting Tamil as liturgical language was realized in practice not by insisting upon its divinity, but by invoking its status as “mother tongue” and hence a language intelligible to its speakers.

This is the argument that was used, for instance, by Kunrakudi Adigal, one of the key spokesmen on this issue. For him, Tamil aruccanai was a weapon with which to counter not just Sanskritic Brahmanism’s hegemony but the Dravidian movement’s atheism as well. In 1953, at a time when Ramasami’s [Periyar E. V. Ramasamy] campaigns against religion and Hinduism were gaining momentum, he argued that it was Sanskrit’s “unintelligibility” that rendered it incomprehensible to the Tamil populace and that, not surprisingly, promoted irreligiosity among them.

“If the pujaris [priests] were to cast off their superiority complex and to conduct archanais [worship] in a language understandable to the average devotee, there would be no anti-god demonstration in the street”

(quoted in Presler 1987: 115-16).

As if to prove this point, in 1971, when Karunanidhi was chief minister, he declared that following a nearby temple’s 1953 switch to Tamil aruccanai, the number of its patrons as well as the temple’s revenues had dramatically escalated."

[Quelle: Sumathi Ramaswamy [சுமதி ராமஸ்வாமி]: Passions of tongue : Language devotion in Tamil India 1891 - 1970. -- Berkeley : Univ. of California Pr., 1997. -- S. 40. -- Fair use]

1953

Bombay (Marathi मुंबई): Es erscheint:

Henry Heras S. J. (1888 - 1955): Studies in Proto-Indo-Mediterranean culture. -- Vol. 1. -- Bombay : Indian Historical Research Institute, 1953. -- 542 S. : Ill. -- Online: Studies In Proto-indo-mediterranean Culture Vol-i (1953) : Heras Rev. H. : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

Aus dem Vorwort:

"The utilization of all these materials for the reconstruction of that unknown period of the proto-history of India, was the aim of the author when he began these studies. Three great ideas, like three beacon lights, have guided him in the prosecution of his work

  1. It is now evident that the ancient nations of the world were not isolated, living as it were in water-tight compartments. Just the opposite. It was the period of the great migrations of mankind, not only overland but even by sea. Genesis refers to these early migrations. The literature of India mentions them in an unmistakable way. Hence the study of the civilization of the Indus Valley could not be undertaken without reference to the neighbouring nations of the ancient world. The archaeological discoveries concerning these nations carried out in modern times have facilitated our task a great deal.
     
  2. India has peerless treasures of ancient literature which must not be overlooked while studying the history of her primeval age. Epic and puranic literature enshrine numberless recollections of those early days. Buddhist and Jaina works have kept most precious traditions of the early generations of Indian life. Ancient Tamil and Kannada literatures reveal the past lore of the Dravidian race and disclose many legends and stories of most valuable significance. Vedic literature in general, with its wealth of high philosophy and ascetical ideas, might perhaps be the channel through which the ancient ideas of those early men have come down to us. The Rgveda itself in particular might have been influenced by the civilization of the cities of the Indus Valiev. Modern studies in Sanskrit, Pali and Ardhamagadhi literatures, as well as the most recent research in philology, have helped us much in carrying out our work to a successful end.
     
  3. For we may confidently and most solemnly aver that Mohenjo-Daro [Sindhi موئن جو دڙو], Harappa [Urdu ہڑپہ,] and Chanhu Daro [Urdu چنھودڑو] are still alive in India. In the course of my seventeen years of study of this civilization, many friends have asked me : What causes have brought about the destruction of the civilization of the Indus Valley ? That destruction is a postulate which has never been proved. The cities of Mohehjo-Daro, Harappa, Chanhu-Daro and many others have perished, it is true; but the civilization which flourished in those cities survived their end. India has not changed much in the course of ages. Invasions have taken place, wars have been waged in her vast plains, new nations and races have conquered the land and ruled over it, foreign civilizations have brought new notions and new ideals ; but everybody and everything has been remodelled and reshaped and recast by the influence of the Indian nation and its ancient civilization. The ancient civilizations of Egypt, Babylonia and Assyria have been blotted out from the map of the world. But that of India, the first lights of which have been discovered in modern times along the banks of the Indus, is still alive.

This is, indeed, a great boon to the historian who carries on his work of reviving the past, while living in India itself. We are still breathing the atmosphere that nurtured those ancient heroes. The Minas [Hindi मीणा] and Paravas [Tamil பரதவர்] and Velalas [Tamil வேளாளர்] and Kudagas [Kannada ಕೊಡವ] are still living round us. The scripts that are being used by the different languages of India are acknowledged as the natural final development of the cryptic signs of the Indus Valley inscriptions. Echoes of the ancient language spoken by the Indus Valley dwellers resound in our ears continually. The belief in the existence of one God still leads the destinies of the Indian nation.

It has been the fashion in some quarters to ignore India while narrating the efforts of man to shape what we now call the civilization of the modern world. This conspiracy of silence will, we hope, be now over for good. If our studies have contributed their mite to make India’s past known to the whole world, we shall consider our efforts well paid.

H. HERAS. S.J.

St. Xavier's College, Bombay, 21st June, 1953."

[a.a.O., S. x ff. -- Fair use]

"Appendix

THE LANGUAGE OF THE PROTO-INDIANS

[...]

1942.    Prof. C. R. Ramachandra Dikshitar, of the same University, while speaking of the cults prevalent in the Indus Valley, cautiously remarks in a foot-note that

‘‘no finality can however be claimed until the script is satisfactorily deciphered” ; and then adds : ‘‘The Rev. Fr Heras is endeavouring to decipher it as Tamil.”

1942.    Prof. Suniti Kumar Chatterji, of the Calcutta University in the course of his second lecture on Indo-Aryan and Hindi, delivered in Ahmedabad in 1940, while mentioning some of the attempts made at deciphering the Proto-Indian script, stated :

‘‘Father H. Heras’s very self-convinced excursions into the field by reading Cen-Tamiz [செந்தமிழ் - klassischesTamil] of c. 500 A.D., (itself admitted by linguisticians to be very far removed from the still more ancient Tamil of pre-Christian times) into the inscriptions on Mohenjo-Daro seals, lack all sound philological methods.”

I fully agree with the above authors, all of them intimate friends of mine, that to read Tamil, or Sen-amil, or even ‘‘the still more ancient Tamil of pre-Christian times” would be absolutely a wrong method of interpretation from the philological point of view ; as a matter of fact, at the very beginning of my work of decipherment, after I realized that the Proto-Indians were most likely Dravidians and probably spoke a Dravidian language, I absolutely discarded the idea of any modern Dravidian language as the probable language of those ancient people. Thus, for instance, I wrote in the first article I published on this subject, when all the inscriptions unearthed up to that date had not yet been deciphered

  • 1936.    ‘‘Being Dravidians, the inhabitants of Mohenjo-Daro and Northern India naturally spoke a Dravidian language ; yet this language was not one of the Dravidian languages now spoken in India, but probably their parent, which may be called Proto-Dravidian.”

When all the inscriptions had already been deciphered, I once more wrote the following about the language of the Proto-Indians : -

  • 1937.    "The language used in these inscriptions most certainly belongs to the family of Dravidian languages. I style it Proto-Indian language. It must be older than all the Dravidian languages spoken in India at present, and may finally be acknowledged as the parent of all these languages."

These two quotations, published three years at least before the above Professors had uttered their respective statements, show how fully in agreement with them I am since the very beginning of my work. The language spoken by the Proto-Indians may be styled Proto-Indian, and even better Proto-Dravidian (as I stated in 1936), and may be supposed to have been the parent language of all the modern Dravidian languages in India. In 1939 Prof. Gray, an American philologist of great reputation, gave also the same denomination "Proto-Dravidian” to the first, for him still hypothetical, language spoken by the Dravidians, which would be the origin and source of all modern Dravidian languages.

This is precisely what Prof. Suniti Kumar Chatterji also feels about this question :

"All these would make it a plausible assumption that it was the Dravidians who had built up the great city cultures of the Panjab and Sindh before the Aryans came. Whether this assumption is correct or not will be settled finally only when we can read the Mohenjo-Daro script, and when the language is proved to be the source or an early form of the present day Dravidian languages.’’ But he continues forthwith : "It will not do to read Old Tamil straight away into the inscriptions on this assumption, as Father Heras is doing”.

Hardly could Fr. Heras read Old Tamil into the inscriptions, when he does not know Old Tamil.

Our work of reconstructing the early Proto-Dravidian language has been more accurately described in a more recent article contributed by Dr J. J. Crowley to an Oxford review :

“Heras then attempted the reconstruction of early Dravidian, or more correctly of Proto-Dravidian, which he assumed gave origin to the various Dravidian languages spoken today, or at least showed them in a primitive stage. This entailed a careful study of the comparative grammar and morphology of all Dravidian languages, with especial regard to the earliest literary remains, in an effort to reveal the nature and rapidity of the development in each, and the degree of convergence and divergence between them. It was expected that this would show the root-language in its simplest and most persistent form. The criteria applied were in strictest accord with the established laws of philology and comparative grammar.”

It is therefore quite clear that I am in perfect agreement with my critics as regards the nature of the language spoken by the Proto-Indians of the Indus Valley. But this is a theoretical question. Have I perhaps in practice not taken into account this theoretical principle ? Or in other words, have I actually read the inscriptions in “Old Tamil straight away”, as my friend Suniti Kumar seems to think ?

As a general reply to this question I may refer the readers to my explanation of how the actual words of Proto-Dravidian were little by little found by denuding the actual — though acknowledged ancient—words of their modern raiment of suffixes and prefixes, thus obtaining at times the original root, at times the most ancient word already derived from the root, (for we cannot suppose that all the original words of the Proto-Dravidian language were roots only). Moreover, in each particular case other philological problems of development were taken into account.

[...]

We could give a number of similar cases to confirm our general treatment of the Tamil, Tulu, Kannada and other Dravidian words before adopting them for reading the inscriptions. If the cases in which the Proto-Dravidian words are not so different from the modern Tamil words are not more numerous, the reason for it is the conservative character of Dravidian languages in general, and Tamil in particular. Take the word kan [கண்], “eye”, as a specimen. It has the original meaning of “piercing”, from which “to see” is derived. It has not changed in the least in the course of thousands of years.

As regards our practical results, we may study them under two sections : Lexicon and Grammar.

  • A.    Lexical Results

In the following table we shall give a number of words of the Proto-Indian inscriptions which cannot be found in the Tamil lexicon. In the following columns of the table we shall add the corresponding forms in Tamil, if any, so that the readers may see the change, or in any other Dravidian languages, which at time are more similar than the corresponding Tamil words. If the Proto-Dravidian word was read phonetically in the course of the study of the inscriptions, it will be noted down in the column of remarks.

[...]

The study of the preceding chart will show how many words of the language spoken in Mohenjo-Daro are not words of the Tamil language, some of which (many times read phonetically) find their corresponding ones in Tulu, Kannada or any other Dravidian languages. The fact that some of the Mohenjo-Daro words, for instance atari, not found in modern Tamil, are traced to Sangam Tamil is not to be wondered at, nor does it prove that the Mohenjo-Daro language is the language of the Sangam period. For the words and forms of the Sangam period are nearer to the Proto-Indian period than the modern language is. Our language therefore, the Proto-Dravidian we are studying, should naturally be nearer to Sangam Tamil than to modern Tamil, without being Sangam Tamil in any way ; as it should be nearer to Hale Kannada [ಹಳೆಗನ್ನಡ] than to modern Kannada, without being Hale Kannada either.

[..]

  • B.    Grammatical Results

As regards the Grammar of Proto-Dravidian, it is in a very primitive state of development, totally different from Sangam Tamil grammar, as the following notes will easily show.

[...]

The impartial reader may judge whether the language used for reading the Mohenjo-Daro epigraphs has been Tamil or Proto-Dravidian. Prom the very beginning of our work we tried to discard whatever smacked of Tamil, for we clearly understood that the Mohenjo-Daro language could be neither modern Tamil, nor Sen-Tamil. nor Sangam Tamil. This we have often stated in our lectures and writings. The contention that Tamil was spoken thousands of years ago is absolutely preposterous, unscientific and baseless.

We fully agree therefore both in theory and in practice with our friend Prof. Suniti Kumar Chatterji; though we may, we sincerely acknowledge, have committed mistakes, here and there, in a subject as vast and as difficult as the present one. I am sincerely indebted to Rev. Fr S. Gnana Prakasar, O.M.I. [Oblati Mariae Immaculatae] for some very valuable philological suggestions, which have helped me a great deal not to have committed many more.

If our attempt has finally been successful we may reasonably be proud of having reproduced some short literary specimens written in a language which was silent for thousands of years and which may consequently be styled one of the oldest languages of the world, if not the oldest, known at present ; but on no account the first language of man, as some overzealous lovers of Tamil would maintain. The position of this language, Proto-Dravidian, in relation to other Dravidian languages spoken in India may be easily deduced from the above quoted statement of Prof. Chatterji and from our own remarks. Our readers may see this relationship graphically expressed in the following diagram.

[a.a.O., S. 132 - 135, 149, 157 f. -- Fair use]

1953

Madras (Tamil மதராஸ் ; Telugu మద్రాస్): Es erscheint:

V. R. Nedunchezhiyan (Tamil  இரா. நெடுஞ்செழியன்  - Irā. Neṭuñceḻiyaṉ, 1920 - 2000): மறைந்த திராவிடம் - Maṟainta tirāviṭam [Lost Dravidian Land]. -- Madras : Manram, 1953

"Nedunceliyan had published a pamphlet called Marainta Tiravitam (“ Lost Dravidian Land"), in which he insisted that scholars, especially Brahman historians with their inherent partiality for Sanskrit, had deliberately kept the greatness of the Dravidian nation “hidden” from the public, and consequently, the knowledge of its antiquity and greatness was “lost,” the memories of its glory “forgotten.” However,

Sir John Marshall who excavated and found the lost cities of Mohenjodaro and Harappa that were buried in the Indus valley, and Father Heras who studied the ruined cities buried in the sand, declared that the lost civilization was Dravidian and in those days, this entire continent was inhabited by the people of that civilization. The history of the Dravidian land concealed both by nature and by [its] enemies, and made to be forgotten, is now being dug up. The task of digging up is not over. It is at the very beginning. The horizon of Dravidam’s history, hitherto shrouded in darkness, is at long last being lit up."

[Quelle: Sumathi Ramaswamy [சுமதி ராமஸ்வாமி]: The lost land of Lemuria : Fabulous geographies, catastrophic histories. -- Berkeley : Univ. of California Pr., 2004. -- 334 S. : Ill. -- S. 120. -- Fair use]

"As R. Nedunceliyan (b. 1920), a Tamil nationalist who went on to hold key cabinet positions in later Tamil nationalist governments in the state, insisted in the 1950s, echoing a claim that had been made half a century before:

“Sir John Marshall declared vehemently

‘The beginning of Indian history should be in the Vaigai river [sic]'.

Therefore, the history of the Indian subcontinent has to begin not in the north but in the southern land, not on the banks of the River Ganges but that of River Cauveri .”

[Quelle: Sumathi Ramaswamy [சுமதி ராமஸ்வாமி]: The lost land of Lemuria : Fabulous geographies, catastrophic histories. -- Berkeley : Univ. of California Pr., 2004. -- 334 S. : Ill. -- S. 119. -- Fair use]

1953-05-27

Tamil Nadu (Tamil: தமிழ் நாடு): Auf die Aufforderung durch  Periyar E.V.Ramasamy (Tamil: பெரியார் ஈ. வெ. ராமசாமி,  1879 - 1973) hin, feiern Dalits in Tamil Nadu (Tamil: தமிழ் நாடு) Buddhas Geburtstag und zerstören Bilder von Ganesha (Tamil: விநாயகர்).

"Buddhist Principles and Periyar

K.Veeramani

Gautama Siddhartha (B.C. 566-486) became the Buddha, the Enlightened One after which he led a life of selfless and dedicated service, spreading the message of compassion and reason. His conception of religion was purely ethical. He put all his emphasis on conduct. In his view saintliness and contentment were to be found not in worship or rituals, but in selfless and virtuous labour. He did not accept the authority of the Vedas, and opposed the Varna-Jaathi (caste) system. In Buddha's philosophy, there was no place for heaven, purgatory or hell. Matter has force and all substance motion. The soul is a myth. He never pretended that God was speaking through him. He taught in Pali, the language of the common people who found emancipation from fear and superstition in his noble teachings.

Buddha's simple and open-minded approach, his adherence to rational outlook, his abhorrence of obscurantist speculation about elusive (non) entities, and his opposition to hierarchical birth-based graded inequality appealed to Periyar E.V.Ramasamy (17.9.1789 - 24.12.1973) who ceaselessly and wholeheartedly strived hard for restructuring the ignorant, superstitious, divided and discriminatory Indian society on the basis of liberty, equality, enlightenment and self-respect. Though he rarely cited the ideas and opinions of others to prove his point or to add weight to his judgement, he used to speak in praise of Buddha and Thiru Valluvar for their stress on the spirit of inquiry, and on the virtues of love, wisdom and fraternal social relations.

Periyar formulated the Indian social issues in relation to religion in this way : How to wean people from their belief in the Vedic and Puranic gods around whom the orthodoxy, to promote their own vested interests, have spun despicable and degrading stories? How to make them give up their wasteful and harmful worship of the idols, participating in meaningless, mechanical and extravagant rites, rituals, ceremonies and festivities? How to make people imbibe noble principles and values and to adopt a cultured rational way of life? Periyar resorted to two kinds of solutions to these issues : First, he demonstrated to the masses the powerlessness of 'gods' by breaking the idols and burning their pictures. In this way, he also encouraged them to hate the injurious and baneful beliefs and practices. Secondly, he propagated the virtuous, truthful and beneficial ideas, values and ways of living by organising functions in the name of the Buddha and Thiru Valluvar.

In pursuit of this policy, Periyar asked his followers to celebrate on 27th May 1953 the festival of Buddha and to break the idols of the elephant-headed god, Ganesha, who is also variously called as Pillaiyar, Vigneswara, Ganapathi, Gajapathi, Vinayaka etc. His appeal was carried out through out Tamil Nadu. Periyar and his companions celebrated the Buddha day in Tiruchirappalli and broke the idols in the open ground (maidan) before the Town Hall. This daring unheard of activity stirred the minds of the people. They began to question the authenticity of the 'puranic' stories and doubt the efficacy of gods. The Hindu orthodoxy perceived this trend to be a dangerous one as it threatened the psychological basis of their traditional privileged status. So the Hindu Sanathanists formed an association to 'eradicate' Atheism, and through its secretary filed a case, under section 295 of I.P.C. against Periyar and two of his companions, T.P.Vedhachalam, a senior advocate, and M.R.Radha, a popular rationalist actor, stating that they had hurt the religious sentiments by their iconoclastic activity. First, the Divisional First Class Magistrate and then the District Sessions Judge declared the case unsustainable. Consequently, the complainants appealed to the Madras High Court. Justice N. Somasundaram dismissed the appeal petition on 13th October, 1954, stating that though the intentions of the respondents might have been to hurt the religious sentiments of a large numbers of people, their action was not an offence because they broke only the images they had themselves made or bought, and not those worshipped in a temple.

To propagate the principles of Buddha, Periyar E.V.R convened a conference at his native town of Erode on 23rd anuary, 1954. presiding over the conference, Dr.G.P.Mallalasekhara, Professor of Buddhist Culture in the University of Ceylon (Sri Lanka), observed that the teachings of Buddha, when properly followed, would contribute to international understanding and world peace. He complimented Periyar for endeavouring to reform the society, amidst concerted and sustained opposition, in accordance with the path shown by Buddha.

Raj Boj, General Secretary of All India Depressed Classes Federatifon and Member of Parliament inaugurated the conference. He said the depressed classes and a vast majority of others in India were subjected to various kinds of cruelties and deprivations under Brahminical social order. Buddhism treated all equally, and in ancient times it overthrew the authority of Brahminism. But Brahminical revival took place through the spread of Saiva and Vaishnava sects and social inequalities got entrenched. The people in the south of India stood unitedly behind Periyar E.V.Ramasamy for the purpose of putting an end to Brahminism. The various struggles they launched under his leadrshlip in this regard had inspired those in other parts also, told Raj Boj.

Periyar unveiled the portrait of Buddha and spoke on the occasion. He told that the conference convened to propagate the principles of Buddha might also be termed as one opposed to Brahmins who were responsible for driving out Buddhism from the land of its origin. Buddha advised that no one should follow him blindly nor accept unquestionably whatever he uttered. The Self-respect movement stressed the same view for about 30 years from its very inception in 1925. Periyar welcomed the revival of Buddhism in India.

One of the resolutions passed in the Erode conference for the propagation of Buddha's principles said this :

"As the Hindu scriptures (Sastras), mythologies (Puranas) and epics (Ithihasas) are concocted and used by the Aryans for their domination and progress and to enslave, degrade and keep in ignorance the Dravidians, they should be eradicated."

Another resolution stated : "As Buddha's life and teachings expose the falsity of the concepts of god, soul, heaven, hell, fate, rites, rituals and ceremonies and stress non-discriminatory, egalitarian social order based on love and mutual help, all sections of people in Tamil Nadu, all organisations and institutions should take steps for the spread of his principles and their application in the actual life of the human race."

While speaking in a public meeting in Madras (now Chennai) on January 31, 1954, Periyar said: "Buddha's philosophy, teachings and principles are very useful for the activities of upholding our principles (stated in Self-respect movement) and of eradicating harmful things."

Periyar went to Rangoon, capital of Burma (now Yangoon and Myanmar respectively) to attend the world Buddhists conference, and spoke in it on 3rd December 1954. He met there Dr. Mallalasekhara, President of the World Buddhists Association and Baba Saheb Dr. B.R.Ambedkar. Periyar and Ambedkar had a long discussion for more than an hour on 5th December. Perhaps this was their last extensive exchange of ideas in person before the latter passed away two years later on 6th December 1956. Baba Saheb had by that time decided to get converted to Buddhism, and asked Periyar to follow suit. But the latter told that he preferred to expose the cruelties of Hinduism by remaining within its fold as otherwise his adversaries would divert the minds of the people and mislead them saying a non-Hindu had no right to criticise the Hindu way. He also requested Ambedkar to take along with him a very large number of people in case he embraced Buddhism.

In his rationalist Tamil daily 'Viduthalai' dated 4th April, 1956, Periyar wrote thus : " I request members of Dravidar Kazhagam and all others to celebrate in a grand manner the 2500th birth anniversary of Buddha in Chennai and in all parts of Tamil Nadu and to take all efforts to propagate his precepts in such a way as to make all people to imbibe them in their hearts. To my knowledge the following are the important among his precepts.

1. Subject everything (you come across) to thorough inquiry using your intellect.

2. Accept only those that you reason finds as proper.

3. Do not accept the incomprehensible and merely imaginary words like god, sou 0.l, devas, heaven, hell, Brahmin, Sudra and Panchama.

Of all the creatures in the world, humans are supreme being endowed with the faculty of reason that is capable of comprehending a thing after proper inquiry and analysis (rational thinking.)

4. Do not believe any thing just because it is claimed to be god's revelation, it is mentioned in the scriptures (Vedas), it is the opinion of a great person, it is followed by a very large number of people or it is practised for quite a long time. Believe only that which appeals to your well informed mind and reason.

Periyar undertook a north Indian tour in February 1959. He addressed very large gatherings in Kanpur and Lucknow. What he spoke about Buddha in those meetings was reported briefly in 'Viduthalai' dated 21st February, 1959 : "To eradicate the degradation of Sudras and Panchamas who are nowadays known as backward people, we have to eradicate religion, scriptures (Shastras) and gods created by the Aryans. So long as these entities remain, we cannot abolish caste. It is for this reason Ambedkar became a Buddhist. He also made many others to join Buddhism. So all should come forward to get red of Hindu religion, god and caste, by means of adopting the Buddhist path.

Buddha's philosophy of compassion and reason, mutual understanding and peace appealed to Periyar. What we have given here is only a glimpse of what he did through out his life to emphasise the Buddhist concern to uphold human dignity and establish an egalitarian social order.

[Quelle: The modern rationalist online. -- URL: http://www.themronline.com/200302m1.html. -- Zugriff am 2003-07-13]

1953-06-15

Dalmiyapuram / Kallakudi (Tamil  கல்லக்குடி ): "Kallakudi Protest" von M._Karunanidhi (Tamil மு. கருணாநிதி, 1924 - 2018) gegen die Benennung Dalmiyapuram (டால்மியாபுரம் - Ṭālmiyāpuram) nach Ramakrishna Dalmia (Hindi रामकृष्ण डालमिया, 1893 - 1978)

"Another set of protests broke out demanding that the name of a small town called Dalmiyapuram be changed to Kallakudi [கல்லக்குடி], its Tamil name.

The day 15 June 1953 would put on display another classic Karunanidhi gimmick. The ‘Kallakudi’ protest, hailed by staunch DMK men as a legendary demonstration by their ‘Kalaignar’, would take place on that day.

Around 10 a.m., when DMK [Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam] members led by Karunanidhi were protesting at the Dalmiyapuram railway station, having pasted the Tamil name Kallakudi on the boards of the station, a train chugged in. Karunanidhi and four others lay down on the track in front of the train in protest in a symbolic gesture and were detained by the police. Other DMK men continued this over the next few hours until a lathi-charge resulted.

Karunanidhi, who was never in any real danger of the train running over him, was eventually hailed as 'Kallakudi Veerar’, or Kallakudi Hero. He was sentenced to two months in jail and a fine of Rs 35. He chose not to pay the fine and spent an additional month in jail. The protests demanding the name change to Kallakudi continued for another 100 days."

[Quelle: Sandhya Ravishankar (Tamil சந்தியா ரவிசங்கர்): Karunanidhi : A life in politics. -- HarperCollins, 2019. -- Kindle ed. -- Fair use]

1954-02-16

Tod von T. K. Chidambaranatha Mudaliar (Tamil டி. கே. சிதம்பரநாத முதலியார் - Ṭi. Kē. Citamparanāta mutaliyār, 1882 - 1954)

Über seine "Bekehrung" zu Lady Tamil [தமிழணங்கு - Tamiḻaṇaṅku]:

"T. K. Chidambaranatha Mudaliar (1882-1954), a well-known Tamil scholar and expert on the medieval poet Kamban, recalls that as a young boy studying in high school in the 1890s, he heard a public lecture by Swaminatha Aiyar at a local college in Tiruchirappalli. The lecture was on the glories and greatness of Tamil. Chidambaranathan remembered it well in 1935:

The reverend Aiyar listed the beautiful jewels worn by our Lady Tamil (tamilmakal):

The Culamani adorns her head;
The Cintamani is on her breast;
The Kuntalakeci hangs from her ears;
The Valaiyapati encircles her arms;
Her waist wears the
Manimekalai;
And her ankles are adorned with the
Cilappatikaram.

As soon as he recited this, I became completely entranced (mayankip poyvitten [மயங்கிப் போய்விட்டேன்]). That night, all I could do was dream about this—that Lady Tamil (tamilananku [தமிழணங்கு]) was approaching me, and bewitching me with her every step and turn with the beauty of her jewels."

[Quelle: Sumathi Ramaswamy [சுமதி ராமஸ்வாமி]: Passions of tongue : Language devotion in Tamil India 1891 - 1970. -- Berkeley : Univ. of California Pr., 1997. -- S. 116. -- Fair use]

1955

Karaikkudi (Tamil காரைக்குடி): Es erscheint:

Mudiyarasan (Tamil முடியரசன் - Muṭiyaracaṉ, 1920 - 1998): காவியப் பாவை - Kāviyap pāvai (Lady of Poetry)

Daraus das Gedicht தமிழ் என்  தெய்வம் - Tamiḻ eṉ  teyvam (Tamil is my deity):

"A dedicated Dravidianist, the poet consciously distances himself from religiosity in his personal reminiscences, but he did not hesitate to write about Tamil thus:

Residing in my heart that is your temple (kōvil [கோவில்]), offer me grace;
Adorned in your garland of poetry, offer me protection;
Resting on my tongue, grant me good sense;
In verse and word, I will be strong.
I worship you every day and talk about your fame everywhere;
The world deems me a mad fellow (pittan), a fanatic (veriyan); Don’t you see?

(Mudiyarasan 1976: 27-28)

[Quelle: Sumathi Ramaswamy [சுமதி ராமஸ்வாமி]: Passions of tongue : Language devotion in Tamil India 1891 - 1970. -- Berkeley : Univ. of California Pr., 1997. -- S. 85. -- Fair use]

1955

C. Mutthuvirasami Naidu (Tamil முத்துவீராசாமி நாயுடு - Muttuvīrācāmi Nāyuṭu) besucht Kap Komorin (Tamil கன்னியாகுமரி - Kaṉṉiyākumari). Er schreibt darüber im Aufsatz குமரிமுனை - Kumarimuṉai [Cape Kumari] in der Zeitschrift செந்தமிழ் செல்வி - Centamiḻ celvi:

"The mind grieves when it thinks of Cape Kumari for it brings back memories of the seizure of southern Tamilnatu by the ocean, and the consequent loss. . . . Both creation and destruction are part of God’s play. Even if we think in this manner of the loss of the southern land, the mind finds no solace even after thousands of years have passed.

So wrote C. Mutthuvirasami Naidu when he visited the Cape in 1955. As he looked out at the vast ocean that stretched before him, the antediluvian history of the Tamil people flashed through his mind as a Herculean struggle between ocean and land, between nature and culture:

I looked out at the boundless expanse of the ocean, ceaselessly and tirelessly turning and rolling, rising and falling, again and again. The thought sprang to my mind as I stood gazing at this sight that in this very manner, the ocean rose and destroyed Kumarikkaṇṭam [குமரிக்கண்டம்] several hundreds of years ago. When the southern ocean boiled over and seized the land, fine men, graceful women, and beautiful people, shapely colorful birds, animals and other living beings, all these suffered and perished. Temples, mansions, and palaces, renowned Tamil libraries and the rare arts, colleges and schools, assemblies and meeting houses, market places and port facilities, homes, gardens, and playing fields, all disappeared into the ocean. When I saw the distress all this caused, my heart trembled and drowned in an ocean of suffering.

So overwhelmed was Mutthuvirasami by such memories that even after he retired for the night, “the cries of distress of Tamilnatu as it sank into the ocean” filled his thoughts. It was almost as if the ceaseless rolling waves continually stoked the embers of distress in his mind:

“Alas! What can we say about the suffering heaped upon the ancient Tamil land, which gave birth to the arts and to world civilization? What can one say about the cruelty of the ocean that caused all this? What can we say about the state of the Tamil speaking land that today stands shrunken and emaciated. . . . How much distress and loss has all this caused? Can we even measure this?”

[Quelle: Sumathi Ramaswamy [சுமதி ராமஸ்வாமி]: The lost land of Lemuria : Fabulous geographies, catastrophic histories. -- Berkeley : Univ. of California Pr., 2004. -- 334 S. : Ill. -- S. 140f. -- Fair use]

1955

Kuala Lumpur (Jawi ولايه ڤرسكوتوان کوالا لومڤور; Chinesisch  吉隆坡聯邦直轄區 ;  Tamil கோலாலம்பூர்): Es erscheint:

Sami, K. P.: வரலாற்றில் தமிழகம் - Varalāṟṟil tamiḻakam [The tamil realm in history]. -- Kuala Lumpur : Kural Manram, 1955

"In a similar vein, a few decades earlier KP. Sami had bitterly observed that Sanskrit had completed the destruction of the antediluvial Tamilian patrimony that the sea had catastrophically initiated."

[Quelle: Sumathi Ramaswamy [சுமதி ராமஸ்வாமி]: The lost land of Lemuria : Fabulous geographies, catastrophic histories. -- Berkeley : Univ. of California Pr., 2004. -- 334 S. : Ill. -- S. 118. -- Fair use]

1956

In einem Tamil-Lehrbuch für die vierte Klasse:

"From ancient times, Tamilians have lead great lives. They are possessors of a great civilization. In the ancient period, our Tamil natu had spread over a vast extent. Because of three oceanic floods, several parts in Tamilnatu’s southern portion disappeared into the ocean.... In the ancient Tamil land, everyone was educated. The learned commanded respect everywhere. Kings honored poets. Men and women were educated and virtuous. They were excellent scholars as well. Learning and commerce and handwork excelled in these ancient times. Tamilians were heroic. They went to the west and to the east for commerce. They spread Tamil culture everywhere. Tamil kings ruled without swerving from the path of justice. . . . The people were devoted to language and land. We have descended from such great Tamil people. We have to protect our ancient greatness, and excel once again in learning, commerce and work."

[Quelle: Sumathi Ramaswamy [சுமதி ராமஸ்வாமி]: The lost land of Lemuria : Fabulous geographies, catastrophic histories. -- Berkeley : Univ. of California Pr., 2004. -- 334 S. : Ill. -- S. 112. -- Fair use]

1956

Madras State : C. Subramaniam und Muthukannappan im Legislative Council:

"C. Subramaniam, the Congress minister for education, indeed put the ball back into the court of the purists by declaring in 1956:

“The Tamil language has power (cakti [சக்தி]). Those who allege that exposure to the words of other languages will lead to its destruction, will block its development, and will tarnish its excellence must have no faith in the power of our Tamil language.”

Devotee-cum-legislator Muthukannappan responded,

“We cannot forcibly bring in words from another language.. . . [I]f we do so, Tamiḻttāy [Tamil தமிழ்த்தாய் = Mutter Tamil] is powerful. She will destroy these words, or she will subdue those other words. Everybody should recognize her power.”

[Quelle: Sumathi Ramaswamy [சுமதி ராமஸ்வாமி]: Passions of tongue : Language devotion in Tamil India 1891 - 1970. -- Berkeley : Univ. of California Pr., 1997. -- S. 151. -- Fair use]

1956

Kumbakonam (Tamil கும்பகோணம்): Es erscheint:

R. Srinivasan (Tamil ஆர். ஸ்ரீனிவாசன் - Ār. Srīṉivācaṉ): தமிழ் தென்றல் வாசகம் (முதற் படிவம் : சிறப்பு பகுதி) - Tamiḻ teṉṟal vācakam (mutaṟ paṭivam: Ciṟappu pakuti)  [Tamil reader for form three]. -- Kumbakonam : L. V. K., 1956

"So, for example, a 1956 lesson asks the child:

“The area where Tamil is spoken is called Tamilakam [தமிழகம்]. What was the state of Tamilakam in former times? What was its state in the middle period? What is its condition now? Is it not necessary that we know about this?”

Prosaic and disenchanted though these questions might appear on their face, the response that the lesson offers is couched in the language of exilic loss:

In ancient times, Tamilakam was a sprawling landmass. It stretched all the way across the ocean to Australia and Africa. It was called “Kumarikkantam [குமரிக்கண்டம்].” The continent was divided into 49 natu [நாடு]. Other features included the Kumari [குமரி] mountain, and the rivers Kumari and Pahruli. The first and second cankams also flourished on that continent. Because of the boiling over of the ocean, that continent drowned. . . . After this, the boundaries of Tamilakam were the Tirupati hill in the north, Cape Kanyakumari in the south, and the two seas on the east and west. . . . Tamilakam which flourished in such an excellent manner has now shrunk in size. Tamil is spoken well today in only 9 districts."

[Quelle: Sumathi Ramaswamy [சுமதி ராமஸ்வாமி]: The lost land of Lemuria : Fabulous geographies, catastrophic histories. -- Berkeley : Univ. of California Pr., 2004. -- 334 S. : Ill. -- S. 176. -- Fair use]

1956

Beschluss der Academy of Tamil Culture:

"English should continue to be the official language of the Union and the language for communication between the Union and the State Governments and between one State Government and another."

Unterschrieben u.a. von

  • C. N. Annadurai (Tamil சி. என். அண்ணாதுரை, 1909 - 1969)
  • Periyar_E._V._Ramasamy (Tamil பெரியார் ஈ. வெ. இராமசாமி, 1879 - 1973)
  • C. Rajagopalachari (Tamil சக்ரவர்தி ராஜகோபாலாச்சாரி, 1878 - 1972)

[Quelle: Guha, Ramachandra [रामचंद्र गुहा] <1958 - >: India after Gandhi : The history of the world's largest democracy. -- Revised and updated ed. -- London : Macmillan, 2017. -- S. 389. -- Fair use]

1956

Madras (Tamil மதராஸ் ; Telugu మద్రాస్): Es erscheint:

K. A. Nilakanta Sastri (1892 - 1975) ; H.S Ramanna:  Historical method in relation to Indian history. -- rev. and amplified  version [der Ausgabe 1941]. -- Madras : Univ. of Madras, 1956. -- 184 S. -- Online: Historical method in relation to Indian history : Sastri, K. A. Nilakanta : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

"Chronology

We now pass on to Chronology. Now the first observation to make here is that somehow it has happened that in discussions of early South-Indian Chronology there has been prevalent a fairly widespread error of using geological arguments in historical discussions. Now this has to be said with some emphasis, because the talk of Lemuria, of Tamil having been spread all over the area of the Indian Ocean before the ocean submerged the land, and of its being the oldest language in the world—this talk has been the pastime of some persons for too long. It is time that some one stood up and said, 'It is all bosh !' Human  life on earth in any form that concerns us as students of history had its first beginnings not more than thirty or thirty-five thousand years ago at the highest. But geological changes relate to conditions of earth before any life (not only human life) came into existence. Submergence of continents and emergence of oceans are not occurrences of every day, and the last great change of this character is put by geologists some millions of years ago. What has this got to do with the history of humanity, which stretches back at most to about five, six ; or ten or twenty thousand years from now? For that length of time would take us back to the old stone age, an age hardly different from animals, when they had no language, no speech and no culture, and were still living in the food-gathering stage.                

A word may be said in passing about the most strenuous efforts of Fr. H. Heras to demonstrate that a form of proto-Tamil was the language spoken and written by the Mohenjo Daro people, that there were Ballalas, Pandyas and Cholas among them, and so on. I am all admiration for the industry and the consistency with which the learned Father set about this business, and he recently published in their final form the processes leading him to his conclusions, though the conclusions themselves had been set forth earlier in considerable detail in several articles and lectures ; but large parts of the argument are, to say the least, very unconvincing. A great deal of classification and simplification has resulted from his study of these symbols as well as from that of other scholars. But his interpretations seem to take no account whatever of the many difficulties philological, morphological, cultural and historical in the way of our accepting them. At any rate there seems to be no reason to prefer them to the readings and interpretations offered by other writers like Waddell and Pran Nath.

The story of the Three Tamil Sangams has only to be read in the original for one to see that there is no history there. Like the Buddha, the Jina and Vyasa, here also one historical reality has been multiplied many-fold by the myth-making instinct of the people.

Another tendency of which mention has been made elsewhere is that of treating famous figures as contemporaneous whether in fact they were so or not. Likewise we have collections of tales in Tamil, Tamil-navalar charitai [தமிழ் நாவலர் சரிதை] which is about two hundred and fifty years old at the most. Some recent hoax, Vinodarasamanjari [விநோதரசமஞ்சரி], has-given popularity to a number of most unauthenticated accounts,, and scholars have wasted their efforts in attempting chronological-reconstructions on the basis of these tales."

[a.a.O., S. 87f. -- Fair use]

1956-02-15

Gentlemen's agreement der Führer der Congress party zur Vereinigung von Hyderabad State (1948–1956) und Andhra State

"AGREEMENT

  1. 1 . The expenditure of the central and general administration of the State should be borne proportionately by the two regions and the balance of income from Telangana should be reserved for expenditure on the development of Telangana area. This arrangement will be reviewed after five years and can be continued for another five years if the Telangana members of the Assembly so desire.

  2. Prohibition in Telangana should be implemented in the manner decided upon by the Assembly members of Telangana.
  3. The existing educational facilities in Telangana should be secured to the students of Telangana and further improved. Admission to the colleges, including technical institutions in the Telangana area, should be restricted to the students of Telangana, or the latter should have admission to the extent of one-third of the total admissions in the entire State, whichever course is advantageous to Telangana students.
  4. Retrenchment of services should be proportionate from both regions if it becomes inevitable due to integration.
  5. Future recruitment to services will be on the basis of population from both regions.
  6. The position of Urdu in the administrative and judicial structure existing at present in the Telangana area may continue for five years, when the position may be reviewed by the Regional Council. So far [as] recruitment to services is concerned, knowledge of Telugu should not be insisted upon at the time of recruitment but they should be required to pass a prescribed Telugu test in two years after appointment.
  7. Some kind of domicile rules, e.g. residence for 12 years should be provided in order to assure the prescribed proportion to recruitment of services for Telangana area.
  8. Sales of agricultural lands in Telangana area [is] to be controlled by the Regional Council.
  9. A Regional Council will be established for the Telangana area with a view to secure its all-round development in accordance with its needs and requirements.
  10. The Regional Council will consist of 26 members as follows: 9 members of the Assembly representing each district of Telangana to be elected by the Assembly members of the Telangana districts separately, 6 members of the Assembly or the Parliament elected by the Telangana representatives of the Assembly, 5 members from outside the Assembly to be elected by the Telangana members of the Assembly.
    All ministers from Telangana area will be (its) members.
    The Chief Minister or Deputy Chief Minister, whoever is from Telangana, will be the Chairman of the Council. Other Cabinet Ministers may also be invited.
    1. The Regional Council will be a statutory body empowered to deal with and decide about matters mentioned above and those relating to planning and development, irrigation and other projects, industrial development within the general plan and recruitment to services in so far as they relate to Telangana area. If there is [a] difference of opinion between the views of the Regional Council and the Government of the State, a reference may be made to the Government of India for final decision,
    2. Unless revised earlier by agreement. this arrangement will be reviewed at the end of ten years.
  11. The Cabinet will consist of members in proportion of 60 to 40 per cent, for Andhra and Telangana respectively. Out of the 40 per cent Telangana Ministers one will be a Muslim from Telangana.
  12. If the Chief Minister is from Andhra, the Deputy Chief Minister will be from Telangana and vice-versa. Two out of the following portfolios will be assigned to Ministers from Telangana:
    1. Home,
    2. finance,
    3. Revenue,
    4. Planning and Development,
    5. Commerce and Industry.
  13. The HPCC [Hyderabad Pradesh Congress Committee] President desires that the PCC [Pradesh Congress Committee] should be separate for Telangana upto the end of 1962. APCC  [Andhra Pradesh Congress Committee - Wikipedia] President has no objection."

[Quelle: K. V. Narayana Rao (1934 - ): The emergence of Andhra Pradesh. -- Bombay : Popular Prakashan, 1973. -- 350 S. -- S. 301ff. -- Online: The emergence of Andhra Pradesh : Narayana Rao, K. V., 1934- : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive. -- Fair use]

1956-10-13

Madurai (Tamil மதுரை): Sankaralinganar (Tamil சங்கரலிங்கனார் - Caṅkaraliṅkaṉār, 1895 - 1956) stirbt an den Folgen seines 77tägigen Hungerstreiks. Seine Hauptforderung: Umbenennung von Madras State in Tamil Nadu.

"Stalin Jegadeesan [ஸ்டாலின் ஜெகதீசன்] may not have given up his life for Tamil, but Shankaralinga Nadar certainly did, in the process of demanding that Madras State be renamed Tamilnadu. Nothing in the biography of Shankaralingam, as it has been documented by T. Sundararajan (1986) from information obtained from his grandson, offers a clear reason for why he took this course of action. A lifelong Gandhian, Shankaralingam was born in 1895. He was a social reformer and nationalist in his native Virudhunagar, but there seems to be little evidence of devotion to Tamil during his early years. The only possible explanation that Sundararajan himself obliquely offers is that by the 1940s, Shankaralingam was disillusioned with life, and perhaps the fast was one last effort to do something for his beloved Tamilnadu (Sundararajan 1986: 68-76). He died on 13 October 1956 after a fast of over seventy days; his demand for renaming the state was not granted until a decade later."

[Quelle: Sumathi Ramaswamy [சுமதி ராமஸ்வாமி]: Passions of tongue : Language devotion in Tamil India 1891 - 1970. -- Berkeley : Univ. of California Pr., 1997. -- S. 230f. -- Fair use]

1957-01-23

Madras State: Tamil official act

Tamil (தமிழ்)  wird Amtssprache (official language - Tamil ஆட்சி மொழி - Āṭci moḻi)

"Second, from the start, the state openly acknowledged that for the time being, the enthronement of Tamil was more symbolic than real. It was all well and good to “love” Tamil, but logistically, the rule of Tamil would take time, enthusiasm, and resources to implement.

“If we decide suddenly that everything has to be in Tamil, that will only give rise to confusion,”

Subramaniam informed legislators in December 1956. L. Raghava Mudaliar warned his fellow legislators that devotion to the language (molipparru [மொழிப்பற்று]) should not lead them to a hasty implementation of an atci moli, “official language,” that would be incomprehensible to the very people for whose benefit it was being created. 

It was therefore decided that the official language policy would at first be implemented, starting in 1958-59, in eight departments of government. By 1962, this was abandoned in favor of implementation in four phases (Kumaramangalam 1965: 68-73). It was acknowledged that it would be easiest to switch to Tamil as atci moli at the lowest rungs of the district administration where English had hardly penetrated. It would be most difficult to ensure the use of Tamil at the highest levels of government, in the state secretariat at Madras, and this was scheduled for only the fourth phase. It is telling that no time limit was explicitly stipulated for the unilateral use of Tamil in all spheres.

Indeed, the state’s troubles over the next few years show clearly that it took the plunge before it was ready. Subramaniam himself compared his government’s dilemma to that of someone who did not know how to swim but realized that he could only learn by throwing himself into the water. This analogy is quite revealing, for the list of tasks to be accomplished before Tamil could actually become atci moli was formidable, ranging from the technological to the ideological.

For instance, Tamil could not really be used for bureaucratic communication until government offices were stocked with Tamil typewriters. This in turn depended on the standardization of the keyboard, on which there was much disagreement from the start. Further, typists had to learn to use these Tamil keyboards, and a network of training institutes, as well as economic incentives for those who underwent the training, had to be set up. The absence of skills in Tamil shorthand was also a glaring problem.

Another key requirement, of course, was the creation of a glossary of Tamil administrative terms. Here, in addition to the ongoing debate between purists and nonpurists on the relative “Tamilness” of these terms, there was the more demanding task of overcoming years of bureaucratic dependence on English, especially in higher circles of the government, and instilling in its place the new habit of using Tamil. Further, once the glossary was created, various laws and statutes had to be translated into Tamil. In certain areas, such as legal procedures, there was doubt from the very beginning whether Tamil was even capable of expressing “with precision” the language of the courts. 

Finally, all these measures depended on the existence of a pool of government officers and clerical staff who were equipped to use Tamil in administrative contexts. Many legislators pointed out the obvious paradox of bringing in Tamil as language of rule, even before institutionalizing its use in school and college education. But here, as late as 1963, Chief Minister Bhaktavatsalam dismissed demands for Tamil as principal medium of instruction in colleges as

“not a practical proposition,. . . not... in the interests of national integration, not in the interests of higher education, and not in the interests of the students themselves”

(quoted in Kumaramangalam 1965: 62-63).

Even a casual survey of government records in the 1950s and 1960s shows that this brief treatment only touches upon the surface of the numerous dilemmas faced by the state in implementing the bill that was passed so confidently in December 1956."

[Quelle: Sumathi Ramaswamy [சுமதி ராமஸ்வாமி]: Passions of tongue : Language devotion in Tamil India 1891 - 1970. -- Berkeley : Univ. of California Pr., 1997. -- S. 163f. -- Fair use]

1957-07-11

"Thus at a public meeting in 1957, S. Gurusami, the editor of the DK [Dravidar Kazhagam] newspaper Vitutalai [விடுதலை], declared that Brahmans had used Tamilian labor to build their huge temples and carve their sculptures, and had then prevented Tamilians from offering worship there. Instead of the richness of Tamil, the “filth” of Sanskrit filled these temples, and E. V. Ramasami, Tamilians were told, would soon lead a protest to help Tamil, the language of aruccaṉai [அருச்சனை = worship]."

[Quelle: Sumathi Ramaswamy [சுமதி ராமஸ்வாமி]: Passions of tongue : Language devotion in Tamil India 1891 - 1970. -- Berkeley : Univ. of California Pr., 1997. -- S. 139. -- Fair use]

1957-11-26

E.V. Ramaswami Naicker, the leader of the Dravida Kazhagam, started a movement for caste abolition and his followers burnt copies of the Constitution in many places in Madras State on 26 November 1957. Naicker called for breaking of statues of Mahatma Gandhi and burning of portraits of Mahatma Gandhi and Nehru and maps of the Indian Union as the next course of agitation, to force the Government to accept his demands. If these methods failed to produce results, he warned of attacks on Brahmins. See also post pp. 387-388.

1958/1959

"Soon after Shankaralingam’s [Tamil சங்கரலிங்கனார், 1895 - 1956] death, in 1958-59, two young men named Ilavalakan and Arangarathinam fasted in front of radio stations in Tiruchirappalli and Madras demanding that the Sanskritic work for radio, akasvani [आकाशवाणी], which smacked of Hindi domination, be replaced with the pure Tamil term, vanoli [வானொலி]. Others, including K. A. P. Viswanatham - Wikipedia, joined in their protest, and more than sixty were arrested by 1960. Arangarathinam himself was hailed as the great hero who was a direct descendant of ancient Tamil warriors like Senguttuvan Senguttuvan and Nedunceliyan, and Bharathidasan wrote poems and editorials celebrating his heroic act (Sambandan 1976: 120-25)."

[Quelle: Sumathi Ramaswamy [சுமதி ராமஸ்வாமி]: Passions of tongue : Language devotion in Tamil India 1891 - 1970. -- Berkeley : Univ. of California Pr., 1997. -- S. 231. -- Fair use]

1958-05/06

Sri_Lanka (Singhalesisch ශ්‍රී ලංකා ; Tamil இலங்கை): Anti-Tamil_Pogrom (Tamil இலங்கை இனக்கலவரம்). 158 bis 1.500 Tote.

1958-06-17

Es erscheint das Tamil Gedicht an Tamiḻttāy [Tamil தமிழ்த்தாய் = Mutter Tamil]:

Bharathidasan (Tamil பாரதிதாசன் - Pāratitācaṉ, 1891 - 1964). -- In: குயில் (Kuyil). -- 1958-06-17

“O glorious Tamilian! What is the name of your nation?”
When I ask thus, he sheepishly says “India,” O mother!
How will this child ever improve if he confuses the evergreen
Tamil nation with India, O mother!
Will he ever change, the one who does not recognize his mother as mother, and declares the evil that destroys his motherland as mother, O mother!
Sitting in [his] mother’s lap and nursing on the breast-milk of Tamil, how can this child not know [his] mother’s name, O mother!Tamil is [his] mother tongue, and Tamilnadu is his motherland.
Does not the Tamilian realize this?"

[Quelle: Sumathi Ramaswamy [சுமதி ராமஸ்வாமி]: Passions of tongue : Language devotion in Tamil India 1891 - 1970. -- Berkeley : Univ. of California Pr., 1997. -- S. 67f. -- Fair use]

Bis 1959

Marina Beach, Madras (Tamil மதராஸ்): Aufstellung der Statuen von

1959

Madras (Tamil மதராஸ்):  M. Bhaktavatsalam (Tamil எம். பக்தவத்சலம் - Em. Paktavatcalam, 1897 - 1987) im Legislative Council:

"This did not save the Congress government from being pressured to do away entirely with Sanskrit [in temple worship], replacing it with worship solely in Tamil. Responding to such demands, M. Bhaktavatsalam, the minister for the HRCE [Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments Department]—and not a Brahman—declared in 1959 that when he listened to the aruccaṉai [அருச்சனை = worship] being offered in Tamil, he was not inspired, did not understand it, and found it “boring.”

Another Congress member in the Assembly, P. S. Krishnaswami Ayyangar, a Sri Vaishnavite Brahman, insisted that if Tamil were instituted as the liturgical language, non-Tamil devotees who came to temples would find it difficult to comprehend their gods’ worship—the assumption here, of course, being that Sanskrit could be understood by one and all.

The government’s position was that since religious “tradition” (campratayam [சம்ப்ரதாயம்]) should not be interfered with by the state, and since it did not matter which language was used to offer worship, “traditional” (i.e., Sanskritic) forms of worship ought not be abolished. So, Bhaktavatsalam declared in the Legislative Council:

“Worship has to be offered according to tradition and custom. It is not proper to change that order. There is no point in raising the issue of Sanskrit or Tamil in worship. The demand for bringing in Tamil to do aruccanai is a meaningless agitation. Aruccanai means the recitation of names of the deity. What difference does it make [whether the name is in Sanskrit or Tamil]?.. . This is a meaningless agitation.”"

[Quelle: Sumathi Ramaswamy [சுமதி ராமஸ்வாமி]: Passions of tongue : Language devotion in Tamil India 1891 - 1970. -- Berkeley : Univ. of California Pr., 1997. -- S. 141. -- Fair use]

1959

Es erscheint:

Periyar E. V. Ramasamy (Tamil ஈ. வெ. இராமசாமி, 1879 - 1973): The Ramayana : a true reading. -- 1959. -- 58 S. -- Originaltitel: Irāmāyaṇap pāttiraṅkaḷ : ātāraṅkaḷil uḷḷapaṭi tokuttatu. -- Online: COLLECTED WORKS OF PERIYAR E.V.R. (thesatyashodhak.com)

"1. INTRODUCTION

Ramayana and Baradham [Mahabharata] are the foremost imaginary epics of the manifold romances manipulated by the Aryans. They are designed to lure the Dravidas into their snare, to wipe off their sense of self-respect, to blunt their discretionary faculty and to destroy their humanity.

The respective heroes of these two stories are Rama and Krishna belonging to the Aryas and who were after all, men of a very ordinary type.

These stories again were foisted that the heroes, their relations and their helpers should be regarded as Gods and superhuman beings and venerated by the people as worthy of being worshipped.

A careful and analytical study of the original legends would reveal that the happenings and the events alleged to have taken place are most uncivilised and barbarous. It is also noticeable that there is nothing useful for the people, especially for the Tamils to learn and act up to. It is devoid of morals or laudable philosophy. Evidently these myths are deceitfully written so that Brahmins may look great in the eyes of others, that the women folk be subdued and subordinate, that their (Brahmin’s) dogmas and the code of Manusmriti, that are derogatory to the Tamil enforced into usage and their existence-unwanted existence-eternized.

The originals of these stories were written in Sanskrit. This enables those Aryans to put their interpretations really imaginary differently at different times to suit the occasions and according to the intellectual capacity of the people in the midst of whom they preached. They call these stories Vedas and the marvels of the Saviours that descended from heavens to redeem the world; they are divine righteous dogmas (dharma shastras) that inculcate how people should live. They call these stories the essence of Vedas, the 5th Veda and so on and so forth. By such white lies they are augmenting the self styled importance they do not really possess. Not stopping there, they thrust them into religion and call them the pillars on which religion rests. Not only the masses but also the so-called educated are deceived. The stories have been widely diffused as very valuable and sacred ones and imbued with the blood of the people from their very school career.

Ninety per cent of the Tamils are illiterate and of the rest ten who profess to be literate, most of the people are superstitious scarcely using their discretionary power. They believe in the other worlds of the Aryans’ illusionism and enslaved by this belief they acknowledge the commands of the Aryans and act up to their dictates. To put it briefly all Tamils except the Muslims and Christians are the devout followers of Ramayana.

That the Tamilian may have a clear perspective, that this foolishness and fraudulent beliefs may be wiped off, that he may develop his sense of self-respect, that he may liberate himself from the Aryan yoke of domination, it is peremptory that the vicious motives and nature of the legends and mythologies (puranas) should be disclosed.

With this end in view that much of the readers’ time must not be occupied in reading them but read with undiminishing zeal the chapters of the Ramayana are abridged, picking up all the facts that are important, and published in the book “Valmiki Ramayana Conversation” containing 140 pages in dialogue form.

We do not give credence to the events that are alleged to have taken place. They could not have really taken place at all. Why then so much toil in exploring this episode? It is all because it is my longing to place before the public especially our own men that as the Aryans preach and propagate and hence credited by our men, the original Ramayana contains nothing appreciable, nothing divine, nothing moral to be learned and followed and nothing that would stand to reason, and that our men should open their eyes and see for themselves the fair pretences and hollowness of the Aryan stories which are helpful to call themselves (the Aryans) superior elements by birth and regarded so by others.

We shall here examine the anthropomorphic manifestations of the Devas (Brahmins supposed to be in heaven), the Rishis (sages), Indra (the Head of Brahmins in Heaven) and other so called saints and their qualities.

The Aryans, when they invaded the ancient land of the Dravidas, maltreated and dishonored the latter and had written a false and coloured history wholly fallacious. It is this they call Ramayana wherein Rama and his accomplices are styled as Aryas, Ravana as Rakshasa (Dravidian) and Hanuman, Sugriva, Vali and others as monkeys. This is the conclusion which the great research scholars have come to.

It is the theme of this book to mirror to the Tamils what ascendancy is given to the Aryan and how disgracefully the other communities are deprecated and how oblivious of the sense of self-respect the communities thus debased adore the Aryan characters of the Ramayana and the treacherous and disloyal Dravida betrayers of their own men as Alwars and deities, venerable.

One feature which is the most important of all is that the Tamils, chiefly the educated Tamils when they speak of Ramayana, mean the Kamba Ramayana. The Tamil Pandits to earn their bread and to make a display of their proficiency in literature take themselves up to learning and teaching the Kamba Ramayana and making public speeches on it. The masses should be educated to see how the truth and trend of the Valmiki Ramayana are screened by the affected nicety of the villainous Kamban in drawing a deflected picture of the story swallowing up the real matters. It is regrettable that the Tamil scholars at the cost of their honour and dignity appear before the public to preach of the greatness and sacredness of Kamban’s work."

[Quelle: COLLECTED WORKS OF PERIYAR E.V.R. (thesatyashodhak.com). -- Fair use]

1959

Madras (Tamil மதராஸ்): Es erscheint:

Thiru._V._Kalyanasundaram (Tamil திரு. வி. கலியாணசுந்தரனார் - Tiru. Vi. Kaliyāṇacuntaraṉār, 1883 - 1953): தமிழ் நாடு - Tamiḻ nāṭu  [The Tamil land]. -- In: செந்தமிழ் பொழில் : ஒன்பதாம் வகுப்பு - Centamiḻ poḻil: Oṉpatām vakuppu [Schulbuch für die 9. Klasse] / ed. P. Selvarajan. -- Madras, 1959

"The boundaries of the Tamilnatu in which we reside are confined to 13 districts. Some few centuries ago, Tamilnadu included Kerala and one part of the Telugu country. Some thousands of years ago, Panamparanar [பனம்பாரனார்], who recited the preface to the Tolkappiyam, described the boundary of Tamilnatu in the following way:

 “The good land between the northern Tirupati [Telugu తిరుపతి] and the southern Kumari is where Tamil is spoken.”

Before the time of the Tolkāppiyam, the northern boundary of Tamilnatu touched the Vindhya mountains, and extended even beyond, according to scholars. The southern limit designated as Kumari [குமரி] which we use to refer to the cape today, was a river by that name according to old Tamil literary works. These literary works also tell us that south of that river flowed another river called Pahruli. The land that these rivers made fertile is called Kumarinatu. That land was seized by the ocean thousands and thousands of years ago."

[Quelle: Sumathi Ramaswamy [சுமதி ராமஸ்வாமி]: The lost land of Lemuria : Fabulous geographies, catastrophic histories. -- Berkeley : Univ. of California Pr., 2004. -- 334 S. : Ill. -- S. 175f. -- Fair use]

1959-03-20

Tod von Frau S. Dharmambal (Tamil சா. தருமாம்பாள் - Cā. Tarumāmpāḷ, 1890 - 1959)

Saminathan Dharmambal
Born 1890
 

Karuntattankudi, Madras presidencyBritish India

Died 20 May 1959 (aged 68–69)
Monuments Memorial in Moolakothalam, Chennai
Occupation Social activist, women's rights activist
Known for Founder of Manavar Mandram ("Student Forum")
Spouse(s) Munisamy Naidu
Awards vira Tamil annai ("Heroic Tamil Mother")

 

"Two of these women stand out. One of them is “Doctor” Dharmambal (1890-1959), who was honored in 1951 with the title virat tamilannai [வீரத் தமிழன்னை], “heroic Tamil mother,” for her various services to Tamil and to women’s causes. Born in the small town of Karuntattankudi [கருந்திட்டைக்குடி] near Tanjavur, Dharmambal learned Tamil from Tamil scholars like Panditai Narayani Ammal when she moved to Madras. Prior to her involvement in the anti-Hindi movement, she had already made a reputation for herself as an activist concerned with women’s issues, especially education, and as a practitioner of Siddha medicine (hence her title “doctor”). In addition to leading the anti-Hindi women’s protests in Madras in November 1938, she was also actively involved in the demands for better remuneration for Tamil teachers, and she spearheaded the Manavar Manram [மாணவர்] (Student’s Association) which cultivated tamiḻppaṟṟu  [தமிழ்ப்பற்று - devotion to Tamil] among the city’s Tamil-speaking youth. Along with Dharmambal, two of her daughters-in-law, Saraswati and Sita, were arrested for participating in the protests against Hindi (K. Tirunavukarasu 1991: 200-213)."

[Quelle: Sumathi Ramaswamy [சுமதி ராமஸ்வாமி]: Passions of tongue : Language devotion in Tamil India 1891 - 1970. -- Berkeley : Univ. of California Pr., 1997. -- S. 188. -- Fair use]

1959-12-08

Es erscheint das Tamil Gedicht:

Bharathidasan (Tamil பாரதிதாசன், 1891 - 1964). -- In: குயில் (Kuyil). -- 1959-12-08

"One other important strategy is followed by Dravidianism in filling up the space vacated by Hindu gods. Consider this 1959 poem by Bharatidasan, addressed to a tampiran [தம்பிரான்], “Shaiva monk-preceptor,” in response to the opposition of the orthodox to the growing demand for use of Tamil as ritual language in temples:

Is it religion (camayam) that is important, O tampiran[?]
It is fine Tamil that is indeed eminent, O foolish tampiran[.]
Why do you hate Tamil, O tampiran[.]
Why do you hate your mother, O tampiran[?]
Even if religion is destroyed, Tamilians will flourish[.]
If good Tamil is destroyed, can there be a Tamil community[?]
Do service to Tamil! O tampiran[.]
Tamil is the life of the Tamilian! O foolish tampiran[.]

Is it God who is great[?] O tampiran[!]
It is glorious Tamil that is indeed great[!] O foolish tampiran[.]
Even if God disappears, the Tamil community will flourish[.]
If Tamil dies, its community, too, will die, O tampiran[.]
Do you intend to destroy the Tamil creed (tamilneri) by invoking Shaivism (caivaneri), O foolish tampiran?
Service to Shaivism is not great, O tampiran[.]
It is auspicious service to Tamil that is eminent, O tampiran[.]
....
Only one thing is greater than [our] mother(s)! O tampiran!
Is that not Tamil, O foolish tampiran?"

[Quelle: Sumathi Ramaswamy [சுமதி ராமஸ்வாமி]: Passions of tongue : Language devotion in Tamil India 1891 - 1970. -- Berkeley : Univ. of California Pr., 1997. -- S. 70f. -- Fair use]

1959-12-14

Madurai (Tamil மதுரை): Tod von Somasundara Bharathiar (Tamil சோமசுந்தர பாரதியார் - Cōmacuntara Pāratiyār, 1879 - 1959)


Abb.: Somasundara Bharathiar
[Fair use]

Somasundara Bharathiar
Born Satyananda Somasundaran


27 July 1879
 

Ettayapuram Thoothukudi district
Died 14 December 1959 (aged 80)
 

Madurai

Nationality Indian
Education post graduate in arts, undergraduate in law
Occupation Lawyer, Tamil professor
Employer Annamalai UniversityChidambaram
Known for Tamil research
Title Navalar, Kanakkayar.
Spouse(s) (1) Meenatchi
(2) Vasumathi
Children (1) Dr. Rajaram Bharathi
(2) Lakmirathan Bharathi
(3) Lakshmi Bharathi
(4) Meenatchi
(5) Dr. Lalitha Kameshwaran
Parent(s) Ettappa Pillai, Muthammal.

 

"One such savant devotee whose story is told with a great deal of pride in the devotional community is Somasundara Bharati, reverentially referred to as navalar [நாவலர்], “the eloquent.” A native of Ettaiyapuram, where his father was part of the local landlord’s coterie, Somasundaram was a childhood friend of Subramania Bharati with whom he would read Tamil on the sly. Unlike a majority of Tamil’s devotees, Somasundaram led a life of comparative ease and affluence as a lawyer, first in Tuticorin and then in Madurai. All the same, we are told that he did not let his law practice, profitable though it was, interfere with his devotion to Tamil. Even while working as a lawyer, he earned a master’s degree in Tamil in 1913, and over the next few decades he published numerous essays on the language and its literature, mostly in a compensatory classicist vein (Sambasivan 1967). In 1933, when he was asked to head the Tamil department of the newly founded Annamalai University in Chidambaram, he was faced with a difficult choice, his biographers tell us. On the one hand, he had his lucrative career as a lawyer; on the other, there was service to Tamil, hardly profitable but fulfilling in so many other ways. Somasundaram did not find it difficult to make up his mind: he gave up his law practice and headed the Tamil department for five years (Sambasivanar and Ilankumaran i960: 57-67). This is not the only instance in which his tamiḻppaṟṟu  [தமிழ்ப்பற்று - devotion to Tamil] led Somasundaram to change the course of his life. In 1937-38, when the government announced its compulsory Hindi policy, Somasundaram was one of the leading figures who spoke out against the Congress at numerous rallies; on one occasion, he even suffered a physical assault. His opposition to Hindi was all the more unusual because he had been a dedicated member of the Congress for much of his life up until then: he had organized numerous political rallies on that party’s behalf and had been quite involved in nationalist politics. And yet, as he declared in his Open Letter to the Hon. C. Rajagopalachariar, when Tamilttay was in danger, how could he afford to maintain his old political convictions (Somasundara Bharati 1937)?"

[Quelle: Sumathi Ramaswamy [சுமதி ராமஸ்வாமி]: Passions of tongue : Language devotion in Tamil India 1891 - 1970. -- Berkeley : Univ. of California Pr., 1997. -- S. 212f.. -- Fair use]

1960-02-02

Manamadurai (Tamil மானாமதுரை): Tod von M. Raghava Iyengar (Tamil மு ராகவ ஐயங்கார் - Mu Rākava Aiyaṅkār, 1878 - 1960)

"Consider the fate of M. Raghava Aiyangar, a leading member of the Madurai Tamil Sangam, who between 1905 and 1910 helped edit its famed journal, Centamil [செந்தமிழ்]. In 1913, Raghava Aiyangar was appointed as the chief Tamil pandit in the committee set up to produce the multivolume Tamil Lexicon, and he received the prestigious title of Rao Sahib in 1936 for his efforts. In addition, he wrote several historical and literary theses in a compensatory classicist vein, many critical commentaries, and a study of the ancient grammar, Tolkāppiyam (Zvelebil 1992: 203-5). The latter in particular was severely attacked within the devotional community, by contestatory classicists as well as Dravidianists, for its portrayal of the sexual morality of ancient Tamilians (Maraimalai Adigal 1936b; Pulavar Kulanthai 1958: 22-23). In August 1938, at an anti-Hindi rally held in Madras, Pavalar Balasundaram [பாவலர் பாலசுந்தரம்] fumed:

Raghava Ayyangar has written a commentary on Tolkappiyam. ... I shall read to you what he has written. . . .

“Tamilian women of those days were flirting with whomsoever they came across; the Aryans taught and gave them education to be chaste. . . .”

How dare he write like this? Today, it is the Brahman who plays the part of pimps.. . . [W]ith whom have our women flirted? Can a Tamilian who keeps quiet after this claim to be a human being? . . . Who can put up with such an insult? . . . Are not the Tamilian women our mother [sic]?"

[Quelle: Sumathi Ramaswamy [சுமதி ராமஸ்வாமி]: Passions of tongue : Language devotion in Tamil India 1891 - 1970. -- Berkeley : Univ. of California Pr., 1997. -- S. 195f.. -- Fair use]

1960-04-29

President's Order, dass ab 1965 Hindi die offizielle Staatssprache sein soll.

1960-06-21

Es erscheint das Tamil Gedicht:

Bharathidasan (Tamil பாரதிதாசன், 1891 - 1964):

"We can turn mountains into pits;
We can dry up the ocean bed;
We can fly speedily through the skies.
....
We can even bring the dying back to life.

The Tamilian cannot be separated from Tamil Even for a moment, by anyone."

[Quelle: Sumathi Ramaswamy [சுமதி ராமஸ்வாமி]: Passions of tongue : Language devotion in Tamil India 1891 - 1970. -- Berkeley : Univ. of California Pr., 1997. -- S. 66. -- Fair use]

1960-08-07

V. R. Nedunchezhiyan (Tamil இரா. நெடுஞ்செழியன், 1920 - 2000) in einer Tamil Zeitschrift:

"There is no distinction at all between our mother who bore us for ten months, gave birth to us, watched over us, sang lullabies to us, and fed us milk and guarded us, and our Tamil language which taught us about good conduct and tradition, and granted us good values and knowledge, and which is the very reason that we live well and in prosperity. We have the same attachment to our language as we have for our mother; we have the same devotion to our language as we have for our mother; we have the same love for our language as we have for our mother. He who disregards his language ... is like he who disregards his mother and forsakes her."

[Quelle: Sumathi Ramaswamy [சுமதி ராமஸ்வாமி]: Passions of tongue : Language devotion in Tamil India 1891 - 1970. -- Berkeley : Univ. of California Pr., 1997. -- S. . -- Fair use]

1960-08-11

Der Prime Minister verkündet, dass Englisch additional bzw. associate Sprach für all-indische Zwecke bleibt.

1961-02-24

Madras State wird von சென்னை மாநிலம் (Ceṉṉai mānilam) in தமிழ் நாடு (Tamiḻ Nāṭu) umbenannt. Die englische Bezeichnung bleibt Madras State

1962-04-15

Es erscheint das Tamil Gedicht:

Bharathidasan (Tamil பாரதிதாசன், 1891 - 1964): Living for Tamil is the only life. -- in:  குயில் (Kuyil). -- 1962-04-15

"O Tamil! Homage to you!
....
Your well-being is ours as well.
Your victories are ours as well.
We may as well be dead if we live for ourselves.
Living for Tamil is the only life!"

[Quelle: Sumathi Ramaswamy [சுமதி ராமஸ்வாமி]: Passions of tongue : Language devotion in Tamil India 1891 - 1970. -- Berkeley : Univ. of California Pr., 1997. -- S. 66. -- Fair use]

1962-06-27

Tod von Frau Muvalur Ramamirttammal (Tamil மூவலூர் ராமாமிர்தம் - Mūvalūr rāmāmirtam, 1883 - 1961), Devadasi

"Muvalur Ramamirttammal (1883-1962) was born in the village of Muvalur (Thanjavur district), as a child was sold in adoption to a dāsī named Achikkannammal, later schooled in Tamil, Telugu, and Sanskrit, and taught music and dance (Jīvacuntari 2007, 20). Not much is known about her early life other than the fact that she married her music teacher, Suyambu Pillai, before she became active in Congress politics (Anandhi 1991, 741). Ramamirttammal began her career as an activist in the Congress party, and was a member of the Congress Provincial Committee for a couple of years. In 1925, E. V. Ramasami Naicker (Periyar) left the Congress to launch the Self-Respect Movement (Dravida Kazhagam [DK]), and Ramamirttammal followed him in 1927. She became a popular orator, and she also published a number of essays in the Self-Respect journals, Kuṭi Aracu and Tirāvianāṭu. She served a six-month jail sentence for picketing in the Self-Respect anti-Hindi protests in Madras in 1938 (Ramaswamy 1997, 188-189). In 1949, Ramamirttammal left the DK, protesting the seventy-year-old Periyar's marriage to the thirty-year-old woman Manniammai, and joined C. N. Annadurai's Association for the Progress of Dravidians (Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK). She died in 1962."

[Quelle: Davesh Soneji: Unfinished gestures : Devadāsis, memory, and modernity in South India. -- Chicago : Univ. Pr., 2012. -- S. 139. -- Fair use]

"And then there was Ramamirtham (1883-1962), a native of the small village of Moovalur near Tanjavur, who was raised in a devadasi (temple dancer) family. With no formal education, much of Ramamirtham’s life, prior to her involvement in the anti-Hindi cause, had been devoted to the abolition of the devadasi system. In 1921, she joined the Congress and allied herself with its radical faction headed by Ramasami. When the latter quit the Congress in 1925-26, she followed him, became a member of his Self-Respect movement, and continued her struggle for various women’s causes, encouraged by Ramasami’s own radical ideas on the subject (Anandhi 1991a: 741-42). Although there is little to indicate that she joined the anti-Hindi movement because she was a devotee of Tamil, she certainly threw herself into it with great enthusiasm, even though she was in her fifties. She played a key role in organizing the Tamilian Brigade, which marched on foot from Tiruchirappalli to Madras in August-September 1938, and was in charge of providing food for the protesters on their six-hundred-mile journey. On their reaching Madras, she joined in the picketing of the Hindu Theological School along with Dharmambal and others, and she was thrown into prison for six months beginning in November 1938 (K. Tirunavukarasu 1991: 168-78). Ten years later, she spoke out against Hindi again, at the 1948 anti-Hindi conference organized in Madras. While not asking them to reject their responsibility as educated mothers, she nevertheless called upon the women gathered there to take to the streets and, like their menfolk, march against Hindi. Unlike men, she suggested shrewdly, women would be treated much more benevolently by the government, and hence could be more effective in the campaign to save Tamil. Women, she claimed, have the capacity to create as well as destroy. Therefore, Tamil women should now rise up and destroy the scourge of Hindi. Her commitment to Dravidianism notwithstanding, Ramamirtham invoked the mythical epochs of Sanskritic Hinduism as well as its archetypical heroines, declaring that Sita had destroyed the treta epoch and Draupadi had brought an end to the divapara age; today, Tamil women would rise and destroy the kali epoch created by Hindi, she asserted."

[Quelle: Sumathi Ramaswamy [சுமதி ராமஸ்வாமி]: Passions of tongue : Language devotion in Tamil India 1891 - 1970. -- Berkeley : Univ. of California Pr., 1997. -- S. 188f. -- Fair use]

1963-05

T. S. Pattabhiraman (Tamil பட்டாபிராமன்) in der Rajya Sabha

"There has been Bengal and there must be Kerala historically. But there has been no Tamil Nad historically. It is only the creation of politicians, of political parties of a recent date. There was nothing in existence as a unified Tamil Nad till about five hundred years ago. It was “Pandya Nad” or “Chera Nad” or “Chola Nad.” There has never been historically a “Tamil Nad.” And why do you want to create a new one, when historically it is not justified? It is not justified politically. It is not justified democratically."

[Quelle: Sumathi Ramaswamy [சுமதி ராமஸ்வாமி]: Passions of tongue : Language devotion in Tamil India 1891 - 1970. -- Berkeley : Univ. of California Pr., 1997. -- S. 137. -- Fair use]

1963-05-10

Official Language Act, 1963. -- Text: https://www.meity.gov.in/content/official-language-act

"Continuation of English Language for official purposes of the Union and for use in Parliament-
  1. Nothwithstanding the expiration of the period of fifteen years from the commencement of the Constitution, the English language may, as from the appointed day, continue to be used in addition to Hindi,
    1. for all the official purposes of the Union for which it was being used immediately before that day; and
    2. for the transaction of business in Parliament:

      Provided that the English language shall be used for purposes of communication between the Union and a State which has not adopted Hindi as its Official Language:

      Provided further that where Hindi is used for purposes of communication between one State which has adopted Hindi as its official language and another State which has not adopted Hindi as its Official Language, such communication in Hindi shall be accompanied by a translation of the same in the English language:

      Provided also that nothing in this sub-section shall be construed as preventing a State which has not adopted Hindi as its official language from using Hindi for purposes of communication with the Union or with a State which has adopted Hindi as its official language, or by agreement with any other State, and in such a case, it shall not be obligatory to use the English language for purposes of communication with that State.
  2. Notwithstanding anything contained in sub-section (1) where Hindi or the English Language is used for purposes of communication-
    1. between one Ministry or Department or office of the Central Government and another;
    2. between one Ministry or Department or office of the Central Government and any corporation or company owned or controlled by the Central Government or any office thereof.;
    3. between any corporation or company owned or controlled by the Central Government or any office thereof and another,

      Translation of such communication in the English language or, as the case may be, in Hindi shall also be provided till such date as the staff of the concerned Ministry, Department, office or the corporation or company aforesaid have acquired a working knowledge of Hindi.
  3. Notwithstanding anything contained in sub-section (1) both Hindi and the English languages shall be used for-
    1. resolutions, general orders, rules, notifications, administrative or other reports or press communiques issued or made by the Central Government or by a Ministry, Department or office thereof or by a corporation or company owned or controlled by the Central Government or by any office of such corporation or company;
    2. administrative and other reports and official papers laid before a House or the Houses of Parliament;
    3. contracts and agreements executed, and licenses, permits, notices and forms of tender issued, by or on behalf of the Central Government or any Ministry, Department or office thereof or by a corporation or company owned or controlled by the Central Government or by any office of such corporation or company.
  4. Without prejudice to the provisions of sub-section (1) or sub-section (2) or sub-section (3) the Central Government may, by rules made under section 8, provide for the language/languages to be used for the official purpose of the Union, including the working of any Ministry, Department, Section or Office and in making such rules, due consideration shall be given to the quick and efficient disposal of the official business and the interests of the general public and in particular, the rules so made shall ensure that persons serving in connection with the affairs of the Union and having proficiency either in Hindi or in the English language may function effectively and that they are not placed at a disadvantage on the ground that they do not have proficiency in both the languages.
  5. The provisions of clause (a) of sub-section (1), and the provisions of sub-section (2), sub-section (3) and sub-section (4) shall remain in force until resolutions for the discontinuance of the use of the English language for the purposes mentioned therein have been passed by the legislatures of all the States which have not adopted Hindi as their Official Language and until after considering the resolution aforesaid, a resolution for such discontinuance has been passed by each House of Parliament."

[Quelle: http://rajbhasha.nic.in/en/official-languages-act-1963. -- Zugriff am 2018-03-20]

1963-10-05

THE CONSTITUTION (SIXTEENTH AMENDMENT) ACT, 1963

Verpflichtet jeden Kandidaten oder Gewählten für einen Sitz im Unionsparlament oder einem der Staatsparlamente folgenden Eidesleistungen (gegen separatistische Bestrebungen):

A

Form of oath or affirmation to be made by a candidate for election to
Parliament:--

"I, A.B., having been nominated as a candidate to fill a seat in the Council of States (or the House of the People) do swear in the name of God/solemnly affirm that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the Constitution of India as by law established and that I will uphold the sovereignty and integrity of India.".

B

Form of oath or affirmation to be made by a member of Parliament:-

"I, A.B., having been elected (or nominated) a member of the Council of States (or the House of the People) do swear in the name of God/solemnly affirm that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the Constitution of India as by law established, that I will uphold the sovereignty and integrity of India and that I will faithfully discharge the duty upon which I am about to enter." ';

A

Form of oath or affirmation to be made by a candidate for election to
the Legislature of a State:-

"I, A.B., having been nominated as a candidate to fill a seat in the Legislative Assembly (or Legislative Council), do swear in the name of God/solemnly affirm that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the Constitution of India as by law established and that I will uphold the sovereignty and integrity of India.".

B

Form of oath or affirmation to be made by a member of the Legislature
of a State:-

"I, A.B., having been elected (or nominated) a member of the Legislative Assembly (or Legislative Council), do swear in the name of God/solemnly affirm that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the Constitution of India as by law established, that I will uphold the sovereignty and integrity of India and that I will faithfully discharge the duty upon which I am about to enter."

Aufgrund dieses Amendment streicht DMK (Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (Tamil திராவிட முன்னேற்றக் கழகம்)) Drawidistan (Dravida Nadu திராவிட நாடு) aus ihren Zielen.

1963-12-10

Madras (Tamil மதராஸ்): C.N. Annadurai (Tamil சி. என். அண்ணாதுரை, 1909 - 1969) und vier weitere Führer der DMK (Tamil திராவிட முன்னேற்றக் கழகம்) werden zu sechs Monaten Kerker verurteilt gemäß dem Prevention of Insult of National Honour Act (Madras), 1957.

1964-01-25

Tiruchirappalli (Tamil திருச்சிராப்பள்ளி): Keezhapaluvur Chinnasamy (Tamil திருச்சி கீழப்பழுவூர் சின்னச்சாமி - Tirucci kīḻappaḻuvūr ciṉṉaccāmi1937-1964) verbrennt sich selbst mit dem Ruf:

இந்தி ஒழிக! தமிழ் வாழ்க - Inti oḻika! Tamiḻ vāḻka - Tod dem Hindi, es lebe Tamil

"All these martyrs, however heroic and lauded, were soon overshadowed by Chinnasami, who set himself on fire in Tiruchirappalli on 25 January 1964, on the eve of municipal elections in the state. Chinnasami’s self-immolation inaugurated a dramatic new form of expressing devotion and offered a spectacular new model of the true devotee of Tamil, as one who turns himself into ashes for his language/mother. Verses have been written on him, including a long poem which portrays him and his family as the archetypal heroic Tamilians (Puthumai Vannan 1968). During the 1964 elections, the DMK [Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam] plastered the walls of Madras city with posters showing the charred body of Chinnasami, and in the 1967 campaign, the party staged a play on his life and death. In April 1967, soon after the party came to power, a memorial to Chinnasami was set up near Tiruchirapalli (Karunanidhi 1989: 698; M. S. S. Pandian 1992: 17; Ryerson 1988: 132-33).

In his memoirs, Karunanidhi tells us Chinnasami’s story in a chapter entitled “Chinnasami, the Lion Tamilian” (Karunanidhi 1989: 498-501). A native of the small village of Kilpaluvur near Tiruchirapalli, Chinnasami had a primary school education up to the fifth grade and later worked as a day laborer. In his spare time, he avidly read Dravidianist literature and newspapers, and he had even named his only daughter Dravidacelvi [ட்ராவிடசெல்வி], “Lady Dravida.” A few days before he immolated himself, he had visited Madras, and on a chance meeting with Chief Minister Bhaktavatsalam, he implored the latter to do something to save Tamil. He was taken into custody. On 25 January, in the early dawn, he doused himself with kerosene and set himself ablaze in front of the railway station in Tiruchirapalli. He was twenty-seven. Karunanidhi writes that as the flames consumed him, he shouted,

“Let Hindi die! May Tamil flourish!”

Karunanidhi also quotes from a letter Chinnasami is believed to have written to a friend on the eve of his death in which he declared,

“O Tamil! In order that you live, I am going to die a terrible death!”

In a speech that Karunanidhi himself gave soon after Chinnasami’s death at a public meeting, he declared,

“Even when his youthful face was being scorched by the flames, from the bottom of his heart, he cried out, consumed by passion for his mother tongue, ‘May Tamiḻttāy [தமிழ்த்தாய் = Mutter Tamil] flourish! Down with Hindi.’ He then surrendered his life.”

Karunanidhi concludes that in his death, Chinnasami gave truth to every Tamil devotee’s reigning sentiment:

 “I want to die with Tamil on my lips!
My ashes should burn with the fragrance of Tamil!”

(Karunanidhi 1989: 498). His wife Kamalam, it is reported, today takes pride in the fact that he was the first to immolate himself in the battle against Hindi.

“[His] greatness is my wealth,”

she notes with tears."

[Quelle: Sumathi Ramaswamy [சுமதி ராமஸ்வாமி]: Passions of tongue : Language devotion in Tamil India 1891 - 1970. -- Berkeley : Univ. of California Pr., 1997. -- S. 231f. -- Fair use]

1964-04-21

Madras (Tamil மதராஸ்): Tod von Bharathidasan (Tamil பாரதிதாசன், 1891 - 1964)


Abb.: Briefmarke, 2001
[Wikimedia / GODL]

Bharathidasan
 
Born Kanagasabai Subburathnam
29 April 1891
PondicherryFrench India
(now in PuducherryPondicherryIndia)
Died 21 April 1964 (aged 72)
MadrasIndia
(now ChennaiTamil NaduIndia)
Occupation Teacher, Tamil poetTamil activist
Period Pure Tamil movement
Spouse Pazhani Ammal
Children Saraswathi Kannappan (Daughter)
Mannarmannan (Son)
Vasantha Dhandapani (Daughter)
Ramani Sivasubramaniyan (Daughter)
Parents Father : Kanagasabai
Mother : Lakshmi


 

"Poetry, I have suggested, is the paradigmatic mode of practicing intimate Tamil devotion. The poet, correspondingly, is a particularly heroic figure within the regimes of tamiḻppaṟṟu  [தமிழ்ப்பற்று - devotion to Tamil], however marginalized he may be within the economies of modernity. While in the early years of Tamil devotion Bharati was the poet devotee par excellence, his putative Brahmanness set aside in favor of the passionate poetry he produced, in the later years it is his self-proclaimed disciple, Bharatidasan, who is the model poet devotee. Reverenced by his fellow devotees as paventan [பாவேந்தன்], “king of verse,” and as puratcikkavinar [புரட்சிக்கவிஞர்], “revolutionary poet,” Bharatidasan has been the guiding muse for a whole generation of poets in the later half of this century whose verses promote agonistic and fierce tamilpparru, and whose ideal devotee is the warrior willing to give up his body for Tamil (Rajendran 1985: 159-283). For did he not ask,

“When harm befalls the glorious Tamil, what use is this body to us?”

(Bharatidasan 1948: 9)?

In his autobiographical poem entitled “I Am King of Poetry,” published late in his life in 1960, Bharatidasan takes pride in the breadth and depth of his scholarship in Tamil, in his role as a teacher of Tamil, in his various poetic creations, and in his unwavering service to his mother tongue (taymolit tontu) (Krishnamurthy 1991: viii-xii). This is not, however, the self-portrait of a militant warrior. That his militancy was largely confined to his subversive writings is also apparent from the numerous biographies of the poet, some critical but most hagiographic, that are available today. Named Subburathinam [சுப்புரத்தினம்] at the time of his birth in 1891, Bharatidasan was a native of Pondicherry. His father was an affluent merchant who fell upon hard times; but we are told that he nevertheless encouraged his son to pursue his love for Tamil, unprofitable though it might be. In 1909, instead of following in his father’s footsteps as a businessman, Subburathinam decided to become a Tamil teacher, taking up his first job in a small village school near Karaikal. From then on up until 1946, he worked in various schools in the French colony. His son proudly mentions that his father frequently talked to him about the difficulties and the indignities of being a low-paid Tamil teacher. At the risk of jeopardizing his job, on several occasions Subburathinam protested to local French authorities over the low salaries paid to Tamil teachers and over their right to organize; over the quality of Tamil textbooks used in schools, which promoted casteism and hierarchy among young children; and so on (Mannar Mannan 1985: 31-69).

There were two important turning points in the poet’s life. Around 1909, he met Subramania Bharati, who had recently arrived in Pondicherry. Over the next two decades or so, Bharatidasan’s poems were dominated by the two themes that saturate Bharati’s own poetry—Hinduism and Indian nationalism (Ilango 1982; Ilavarasu 1990). He wrote many passionate songs on Hindu deities and on Bharata Mata [Mutter Indien], wore khadi (homespun), and kept company with the various nationalists who were part of Bharati’s coterie. This is also when he published what was perhaps his earliest prose essay on Tamil, which appeared in the nationalist daily Cutecamittiran [சுதேசமித்திரன்] in May 1914 and expounded, in a style highly reminiscent of Bharati’s Indianism, on the need for a Tamil thesaurus. Soon after Bharati’s death in 1921, Subburathinam assumed the pseudonym Bharatidasan, “the follower of Bharati,” a name that demonstrated his devotion to his mentor even as it allowed him to publish anticolonial tracts while holding a government job. Although he was chastised over the years for having adopted a name that both was Sanskritic and tied his poetic persona to that of the complex figure of Bharati, Bharatidasan steadfastly maintained that his mentor had been foremost in opposing caste oppression and hierarchy and that he was the first to write in a style of Tamil easily comprehensible to even the commoner. Throughout his life, he remained publicly loyal to Bharati’s memory, refusing to be daunted by those who ridiculed him for having declared himself a slave (tacan [தாசன்]) to a Brahman (Ilango 1982).

The second important transformation in his life came in the late 1920s when he was converted to Dravidianism, through exposure to Ramasami’s fiery anti-God and anticaste writings and to his polemical weekly, Kuti Arasu. Their passionate espousal of the “self-respect” of Tamilians and fierce opposition to Brahmanism resonated with Bharatidasan’s own nascent ideas on such matters (Krishnamurthy 1991: 91-92). Although he continued to publish nationalist poems in the Bharati tradition into the mid-1930s, he progressively became the poetic voice of the Dravidian movement, translating into verse many of Ramasami’s rationalist, atheist, anti-Brahman, and anti-India ideas. It was during the first wave of anti-Hindi protests of the late 1930s that his writings began to reach a wider audience in the Presidency; over the next few decades, his poems were recited by protesters in anti-Hindi street marches, and his iconoclastic plays were performed at public meetings and conferences of Dravidianist parties. In contrast to many of his more militant followers, Bharatidasan himself rarely participated in such activities. He showed his devotion to Tamil primarily by writing fiery poems, plays, and movie scripts; helping local poets organize; and editing and publishing in polemical journals, such as Putuvai Muracu [புதுவை முரசு] and Kuyil [குயில்], and poetry magazines, such as Cuppiramaniya Parati Kavita Mantalam [சுப்பிரமணிய பாரதி கவிதா மண்டலம்]. Fellow devotees often write with admiration that he conducted his numerous literary activities despite financial straits and political hostility. Nevertheless, when he died in 1964, his reputation as the most important Tamil poet of the post-Bharati generation was well secured, not least because of the deployment of his poetry and his plays in the political activities of the Dravidian movement in the 1940s and 1950s (Krishnamurthy 1991: 89-220)."

[Quelle: Sumathi Ramaswamy [சுமதி ராமஸ்வாமி]: Passions of tongue : Language devotion in Tamil India 1891 - 1970. -- Berkeley : Univ. of California Pr., 1997. -- S. 204ff. -- Fair use]

Einer seiner Reim-Slogans in Tamil:

“Our first task is to finish off those who destroy [our] glorious Tamil! I Let flow a river of crimson blood!”

[Quelle: Sumathi Ramaswamy [சுமதி ராமஸ்வாமி]: Passions of tongue : Language devotion in Tamil India 1891 - 1970. -- Berkeley : Univ. of California Pr., 1997. -- S. 62. -- Fair use]

 

Sein Gedicht Em Thamizhar seida padam = Films made by our Tamil people:
 

"Our Tamils started making films one day!
So they produced one, two, ten ... one hundred films!
Not one among them portrayed the Tamils’
gait, dress or manners - not one was alive!
Not one could convey the Tamils’ high worth!
Not one was imbued with a sense of purpose!
Not one featured the talents of fine actors!
Not one could rouse the defeated masses!

Clothes like north Indians, north Indian tunes,
Telugu melodies amidst glorious Tamils!
Hymns in Sanskrit! Lectures in English!
Unpronounceable Hindustani! Obscene dances!
When we subtract all these from the films,
Athimber and Ammami’s Tamil was all that remained!
Gods, cardboard crowns, garden of paper flowers,
 and glass-bead necklace made a feast for the eyes!

Paramasivan came and went, offering benediction!
The chaste wife suffered ill fortune, to be resolved as usual!
After a few songs sung in contest, straining to keep 
to the beat while the mridangam plays a complete cycle, 
Love entered! Sorrow would arrive likewise and depart! 
Great rishis, temples and ponds made up the plot! 
For the ruthless film producers, profit flowed thus 
from sucking the blood of the downtrodden poor!"

[Übersetzung: N. Kalyan Raman. -- In: Beyond Bollywood : The cinemas of South India / ed. by M. K. Raghavendra. -- Noida: Harper Collins. -- S. 2gf. -- Fair use]

1964-12-22/23

Der 1964 Rameswaram cyclone zerstört Dhanushkodi (Tamil தனுஷ்கோடி). Der Untergang von Dhanushkodi gibt den Theorien über den im Ozean begrabenen Kontinent Kumarikkandam [Tamil குமரிக்கண்டம்] / Lemuria neuen Auftrieb.


Abb.: Lage von Dhanushkodi (Tamil
தனுஷ்கோடி) vor dem Zyklon 1964
[Public domain]


Abb.: Weg des 1964 Rameswaram cyclone
[Public domain]


Abb.: Dhanushkodi (Tamil
தனுஷ்கோடி), 2005
[Bildquelle:
www.tn.gov.in/Wikimedia. -- CC BY]

 

1965

Es erscheint:

Mohan_Kumaramangalam (Tamil சுரேந்திர மோகன் குமாரமங்கலம் - Curēntira mōkaṉ kumāramaṅkalam, 1916 - 1973): India's language crisis : an introductory study. -- Madras : New Century, 1965. -- 122 S.

"In practice, the ordinary man finds that the Tamil language is nowhere in the picture.... In Madras city, English dominates our life to an extraordinary extent... . Corporation property tax, electric consumption and water tax bills are only in the English language; all communications of the Collector are in English; in virtually all trade, including the smallest consumer goods, bills, receipts, etc. are made out in the English language. I think it will be no exaggeration to say that a person can live for years in Madras without learning a word of Tamil, except for some servant inconvenience!"
(Kumaramangalam 1965: 69-70).

[Quelle: Sumathi Ramaswamy [சுமதி ராமஸ்வாமி]: Passions of tongue : Language devotion in Tamil India 1891 - 1970. -- Berkeley : Univ. of California Pr., 1997. -- S. 61. -- Fair use]

1965-01-19


Abb.: Karikatur in
முரசொலி (Murasoli): Tamiḻttāy [Tamil தமிழ்த்தாய் = Mutter Tamil] in Tränen
[Quelle: Sumathi Ramaswamy [சுமதி ராமஸ்வாமி]: Passions of tongue : Language devotion in Tamil India 1891 - 1970. -- Berkeley : Univ. of California Pr., 1997. -- nach S. 78. -- Fair use]

1965-01-25

Madras (Tamil மதராஸ்): Wegen der Einführung von Hindi als Amtssprache der Union beginnen Anti-Hindi-Unruhen und breiten sich in ganz Tamil Nadu aus. ca. 70 Tote

In Madras verbrennen sich zwei Männer. Am 27. vergiftet sich in Tiruchirappalli (Tamil திருச்சிராப்பள்ளி) ein 21jähriger

1965-01-26

Inkrafttreten des THE OFFICIAL LANGUAGES ACT, 1963.

Vorausgegangen sind schwere Unruhen in Südindien.

Madras Presidency: Schwere Ausschreitungen bei Anti-Hindi-Demonstrationen: 2000 Festnahmen, die Polizeit greift zu Schusswaffen an mindestens 36 Orten. Mindstens 50 Tote, 130 Verwundete.

Schlagzeilen in der in Madras (Tamil மதராஸ்) erscheinenden Tageszeitung The Hindu:

"TOTAL HARTAL IN COIMBATORE [Tamil கோயம்புத்தூர]

ADVOCATES ABSTAIN FROM WORK

STUDENTS FAST IN BATCHES

PEACEFUL STRIKE IN MADURAI [Tamil மதுரை]

LATHI-CHARGE IN VILLUPURAM [Tamil விழுப்புரம்]

TEAR-GAS USED IN UTHAMAPALYAM" [Tamil உத்தமபாளையம்]

[Quelle: Guha, Ramachandra [रामचंद्र गुहा] <1958 - >: India after Gandhi : The history of the world's largest democracy. -- Revised and updated ed. -- London : Macmillan, 2017. -- S. 390f. -- Fair use]

1965-01-26 - 1965-03-15

Anti-Hindi Freitod von 9 Männern


Abb.: Poster mit den "Märtyrern" für die Tamil-Sprache
[Bildquelle: #மொழிபோர் - Twitter Suche / Twitter. -- Zugriff am 2021-10-20. -- Fair use]

"A year after Chinnasami’s [Tamil திருச்சி கீழப்பழுவூர் சின்னச்சாமி, 1937-1964] death, in the early months of 1965, several other young men followed in his footsteps and immolated themselves. Today, in various devotional tracts, their names are repeated, over and again, almost like a litany:

  • Sivalingam [சிவலிங்கம், 1939/1943 - 1965-01-26],

  • Aranganathan [அரங்கநாதன், 1931 - 1965-01-27],

  • Veerappan [வீரப்பன்,  1938 - 1965-02-11]

  • Mutthu [முத்து, 1925/1943 - 1965 -02-11], and

  • Sarangapani [சாரங்கபாணி 1945 - 1965-03-15].

Three other young men—

  • Dandapani [தண்டபாணி, 1944 - 1965-02-28]

  • Mutthu [முத்து, 1943 - 1965-02], and

  • Shanmugam [விராலிமலை சண்முகம், 1943 - 1965-02-25]

—died after consuming poison.

On January 27, an eighteen-year-old college student named Rajendran [ராஜேந்திரன்], himself the son of a policeman, was killed when police opened fire on a huge anti-Hindi protest march at Annamalai University in Chidambaram. The varying stories of all these young men have been narrativized in the devotional community to conform to the image of the selfless Tamil martyr, overwriting any individual aspirations or passions they might have had. Each of them, prior to death, professed his devotion to Tamil and lamented over Tamil’s fate at the hands of Hindi. Some left behind letters (which were found sometimes beside their charred bodies) in which they proclaimed their deaths to be

“in protest against the imposition of Hindi, and [as] sacrifice at the altar of Tamil” (Barnett 1976: 131);

others cried out

“Long Live Tamil! Down with Hindi!”

as their bodies were beginning to burn. When neighbors tried to save Veerappan, he reportedly told them as the flames were consuming his body that they should use their efforts to save not him, but Tamil. Young Sarangapani died in his hospital bed, saying, it is claimed,

 “I have given up my life for Tamiḻttāy [தமிழ்த்தாய் = Mutter Tamil]” (Parthasarathy 1986: 412).

Mallika, Aranganathan’s wife, told newsmen that her husband cared for Tamil deeply, even more than for his three children and herself. For days before his death, he had been troubled about the ruin that Hindi was causing Tamil, the DMK [Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam]  newspaper Muttaram reported. Many of these young men, it is claimed, were inspired by Chinnasami’s example, which they read about in DMK party newspapers. Aranganathan is believed to have immolated himself after seeing the charred body of Sivalingam. Sivalingam in turn was inspired to his act by Chinnasami’s.

With the exception of Veerappan, who was a schoolteacher, and Sarangapani and Dandapani, who were college students, all the others, like Chinnasami, had had only a basic education and held low-paying jobs of various kinds. Like Chinnasami again, they all came from very poor rural families, and at least in the government’s reckoning, they

“were also reported to be suffering from domestic troubles, illnesses, etc. ”

Finally, they all appear to have subscribed to the ideals of Dravidianism to various degrees. Like Chinnasami, they were rank-and-file members of the DMK. Some DMK leaders publicly expressed their horror over these immolations; others attended the men’s funerals. The party has in general condoned devotion in this form and even celebrates such martyrs, if the hagiography it generates on these young men is any testimony. DMK newspapers routinely carried photographs of the charred bodies and the funeral processions of the dead martyrs, and, as already noted, the date of Chinnasami’s self-immolation has become “Language Martyrs’ Day.” The speeches and essays of key DMK leaders are to this day sprinkled with celebratory allusions to these men. It is reported with pride that newspapers, both Indian and foreign, carried news of the immolations. The Tamil devotee had at last succeeded in drawing the attention of the rest of the world to the plight of his language/mother, by literally burning himself to death."

[Quelle: Sumathi Ramaswamy [சுமதி ராமஸ்வாமி]: Passions of tongue : Language devotion in Tamil India 1891 - 1970. -- Berkeley : Univ. of California Pr., 1997. -- S. 232f. -- Fair use]

"Sivalingam  [சிவலிங்கம், 1939/1943 - 1965-01-26] immolated himself on the morning of 26 January, exactly a year after Chinnasami. A native of Kodambakkam, Madras, he was twenty-two. It is reported that he frequently told his family and friends that unless at least ten Tamilians gave up their lives, there was no hope for Tamil. Telling his sister that she and the rest of the family should stay indoors, as he anticipated trouble, Sivalingam apparently set out for the railway station to join in an anti-Hindi demonstration, saying he would be back later. He left at dawn but did not return (Tiyil Venta Tamilp Pulikal n.d: 12). A report in another newsmagazine notes that Sivalingam was born in 1939 into a large indigent family in a small village called Devanur in South Arcot district. He studied up to the fifth grade in Devanur, then walked two miles every day to attend middle school in the neighboring village of Chattanpatti. His Tamil teacher, a Dravidianist poet named Ponni Valavan, nurtured his love for Tamil. Unable to continue with his education, Sivalingam followed his father and elder brother to Madras, where he worked as a laborer on construction sites. He also got involved with the DMK [Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam] in the city (Ilatciyappatai, 28 March 1993, 20-21). The DMK newspaper, Muracoli, carried a front-page photograph of Sivalingam and reported on his funeral procession (28 January 1965, 1).

A native of Chingleput District, Aranganathan [அரங்கநாதன், 1931 - 1965-01-27] set himself on fire, we are told, at 2:00 a.m. on 27 January in front of the local theater in Virugambakkam. Born in 1931, he was one of three sons. According to one version of his story, although he was employed in the central government’s telephone company, he was interested in various martial arts which he taught to local youngsters. He also took upon himself the task of educating the youth of Virugambakkam in the literature of the Dravidian movement. At the time of his death, he was married, with three children, the youngest six months old (Tiyil Venta Tamilp Pulikal n.d: 13). The Muracoli reported that prior to his death, he wrote letters to Chief Minister Bhaktavatsalam and others informing them of his intention. The paper also carried a photo of his mother, wife, and three children grieving over the charred remains of his body (Muracoli, 28 January 1965, 1; 29 January, 1; see also Ilatciyappatai, 28 March 1993, 21-22). Today, a road in Madras city is named after him.

A native of the village of Udaiyampatti  in Tiruchi district, Veerappan [வீரப்பன்,  1938 - 1965-02-11] immolated himself on 11 February in neighboring Ayyampalaiyam. He was twenty-seven and not married. A teacher who taught at several schools before moving to Ayyampalayam, he spent most of his spare time absorbed in Tamil scholarship. He was also an ardent DMK follower and attended many of its events in his area. He organized a number of youth gatherings where he would read aloud from DMK newspapers, and he taught his students about the wonders of Tamil. He even led his students in anti-Hindi protests prior to his death and also wrote letters of protest to the government. In 1980, a memorial was set up for him (Tiyil Venta Tamilp Pulikal n.d: 13; Deccan Herald, 13 February 1965, 1).

Mutthu  [முத்து, 1925/1943 - 1965 -02-11] burned himself alive on 11 February. A native of Sathyamangalam in Coimbatore district, he was, according to the Deccan Herald, a forty-year-old farmer who was disgusted with the police firing on anti-Hindi protesters (13 February 1965, 1). Another version, however, notes that he was born in 1943, had studied up to the fifth grade, and worked in a truck shop. He was reportedly inspired to burn himself on reading stories of other immolations in the newspapers. He had great love for Tamil, we are told, and was an avid follower of the DMK. The DMK, in turn, commemorated his memory by naming the hall in which they held their annual meeting in Madurai in 1966 after him (Tiyil Venta Tamilp Pulikal n.d: 18-19).

A native of Marutavamcheri in Tanjavur district, Sarangapani [சாரங்கபாணி 1945 - 1965-03-15] set himself on fire on the grounds of his college campus in Mayiladuthurai on 15 March. He was a student studying for his bachelor’s degree in commerce. He was twenty (Tiyil Venta Tamilp Pulikal n.d: 25).

Dandapani [தண்டபாணி, 1944 - 1965-02-28]  was a student of the Coimbatore Institute of Technology who died on 28 February in Peelamedu. Born in 1944 in Kulathupalaiyam in Coimbatore district, he was the first in his indigent family to go to college. Though he realized that his family depended on him to finish his education and secure a job, Dandapani, we are told, was more inspired by the stories of other students who participated in anti-Hindi protests and by the immolations of Chinnasami and others. So he gave up his own dreams for the sake of Tamil (Tiyil Venta Tamilp Pulikal n.d: 15-16).

Mutthu [முத்து, 1943 - 1965-02] died in February in Keeranur near Pudukottai where he was working at a local restaurant. Born in 1943, his friends remember that even as a teenager in the 1950s in the small village of Cinnasanayakadu in Pudukottai district, he was fired with the zeal of Tamil devotion and plastered the walls of local buildings and temples with slogans such as “Down with Hindi!” “Long live Tamil!” Reading the stories of fellow Tamilians who had suffered in the anti-Hindi protests, he was filled with anger. Before he died, he wrote letters to Bhaktavatsalam, Annadurai, and others, expressing his anger. These letters were found on his body (Tiyil Venta Tamilp Pulikal n.d: 21).

A native of Nartamalai in Pudukottai, Shanmugam [விராலிமலை சண்முகம், 1943 - 1965-02-25] died in a Tiruchirappalli hospital on 25 February, two days after consuming poison. Born in 1943, he worked for a local grocery store in Viralimalai  to support his poor family. Prior to his death, he was filled with Tamil consciousness, gave public lectures against Hindi in DMK meetings, set fire to Hindi books, burned an effigy of Hindi, and wrote letters to his relatives urging them to join the Tamil cause. His elder brother founded the still-existing Society for the Language Martyrs of 1965 (Tiyil Venta Tamilp Pulikal n.d: 22-25; Deccan Herald, 1 March 1965, 5)."

[Quelle: Sumathi Ramaswamy [சுமதி ராமஸ்வாமி]: Passions of tongue : Language devotion in Tamil India 1891 - 1970. -- Berkeley : Univ. of California Pr., 1997. -- S. 271ff., Anm.. 41 - 42. -- Fair use]

1965-01-31

Bangalore (Kannada ಬೆಂಗಳೂರು): Eine Gruppe prominenter Congress-Mitglieder appeliert

"to ‘the Hindi-loving people not to try to force Hindi on the people of non-Hindi areas’. The hustling of Hindi in haste, they said, would imperil the unity of the country."

[Quelle: Guha, Ramachandra [रामचंद्र गुहा] <1958 - >: India after Gandhi : The history of the world's largest democracy. -- Revised and updated ed. -- London : Macmillan, 2017. -- S. 391. -- Fair use]

Unterschrieben ist dieser Appell u.a. von

1965-02-17

Madras (Tamil மதராஸ்): Schwere Anti-Hindi Unruhen

1965-02-18

Kerala: Streik gegen Hindi

1966-03-15


Abb.: Titelblild von முட்டாரம் (Muttaram): Tamiḻttāy [Tamil தமிழ்த்தாய் = Mutter Tamil] weint wegen der Tamil-Märtyrer Chinnasami, Sivalingam und Aranganathan
[Quelle: Sumathi Ramaswamy [சுமதி ராமஸ்வாமி]: Passions of tongue : Language devotion in Tamil India 1891 - 1970. -- Berkeley : Univ. of California Pr., 1997. -- nach S. 78. -- Fair use]

1967

Chidambaram (Tamil சிதம்பரம்): Chief Minister C. N. Annadurai (Tamil சி. என். அண்ணாதுரை, 1909 - 1969) in einer Ansprache an die Studierenden der Annamalai University (Tamil அண்ணாமலைப் பல்கலைக்கழகம்)

"In 1967, C. N. Annadurai (1909-69), a devotee of Tamil who was also the chief minister of the state of Tamilnadu, gave a speech at Annamalai University in Chidambaram in which he extolled the virtues of the Cankam poems and the antiquity of “Dravidian civilization.

” He then called upon the students to carry “the message that our classics contain to the entire world and declare that what was the most ancient here is what is being introduced today as the most modern” (quoted in Ryerson 1988: 141-42).

[Quelle: Sumathi Ramaswamy [சுமதி ராமஸ்வாமி]: Passions of tongue : Language devotion in Tamil India 1891 - 1970. -- Berkeley : Univ. of California Pr., 1997. -- S. 45. -- Fair use]

1967

Madras (Tamil மதராஸ்): Eserscheint:

G. Devaneyan [Devaneya Pavanar (Tamil தேவநேயப் பாவாணர், 1902 - 1981)]: The language problem of Tamil Nad & its logical solution. -- Madras, 1967. -- 109 S.

"Devaneyan Pavanar, a devotee whose works are contestatory classicist, lists the following reasons to account for the “Anti-Tamil” biases of the Tamil-nadu Congress:
  1.  “Re-Brahmanization of staff in public offices . . . ;
  2. Introduction of compulsory Hindi in Tamil Nad against the will of the Tamils;
  3. Misrepresentation of Tamil language, literature, and culture by Brahman authors and historians;
  4. Rewarding of Sanskrit scholars and promotion of Sanskrit studies at the expense of Tamil;
  5. Suppression of Tamil with the help of betrayers and venal professors of Tamil in all ways possible;
  6. Prevention of orthodox and genuine Tamil scholars from being appointed to responsible posts in the Tamil department, either of Government or of a University”

(Devaneyan 1967: 25-26).

[Quelle: Sumathi Ramaswamy [சுமதி ராமஸ்வாமி]: Passions of tongue : Language devotion in Tamil India 1891 - 1970. -- Berkeley : Univ. of California Pr., 1997. -- S. 162, Anm. 13. -- Fair use]

1967-02-05/21

Madras_Legislative_Assembly_election. Dravida_Munnetra_Kazhagam (Tamil திராவிட முன்னேற்றக் கழகம், DMK) gewinnt die Wahl. Ab jetzt werden Kastennamen nicht mehr öffentlich genannt. Das verschleiert auch die Gegenwart der Landeigner-Kasten in öffentlichen Ämtern.

"It was not until the DMK came to power in 1967 that such demands were fulfilled, and the pure Tamil cause received a boost, although purification efforts are not particularly high on the agenda of either the Dravidian movement or the Dravidianist idiom of tamiḻppaṟṟu  [தமிழ்ப்பற்று - devotion to Tamil].

Among the DMK government’s first actions was to put up a giant sign, appropriately illuminated with neon lights, on the ramparts of the secretariat building in Madras, which read, in pure Tamil, tamilaka aracu talaimaic ceyalakam [தமிழக அரசு தலைமைக் செயலகம்], “head offices of the government of the Tamil land.”

The state motto in Sanskrit, satyemeva jayate [सत्यमेव जयते], was translated—although not replaced—as the (tani [தனி = pure]) Tamil vaymaiye vellum [வாய்மையே வெல்லும்], “truth always triumphs” (Ramanujam 1971: 26).

Sanskritic designations for various government officials, members of the state legislature, state departments, and so on were all replaced with pure Tamil equivalents, and today, in public functions conducted by the government as well as in official publications of all kinds, it is rare to encounter obviously Sanskritic or English words (although they are not entirely absent).

Since 1967, the Tamil that one hears on the radio, as well as on television, is comparatively free of non-Tamil words. State committees appointed by the DMK government for creating pedagogical and administrative terminologies, as well as for producing textbooks, have been dominated by purists, thus ensuring that pedagogical Tamil and bureaucratic Tamil are as pure as they can be (Annamalai 1979: 50).

And indeed, the 1971 glossary of administrative terms released by the state seemed at last to be taking the right step in the direction of fulfilling the purist’s dream that in the streets of Tamilnadu, it is (tani)Tamil that ought to reign."

[Quelle: Sumathi Ramaswamy [சுமதி ராமஸ்வாமி]: Passions of tongue : Language devotion in Tamil India 1891 - 1970. -- Berkeley : Univ. of California Pr., 1997. -- S. 152. -- Fair use]

1967-04-07

Die Tamil-Zeitung தமிழ் நாடு (Tamil Nadu) zu Tamiḻttāy [Tamil தமிழ்த்தாய் = Mutter Tamil]

“In order that Tamilttay be enthroned, in order that Tamilttay should abide with honor, so that Tamilttay may be crowned ... so many became prey to gunfire, so many drowned in an ocean of red blood, so many martyrs set themselves on fire, so many great ones passed away. This we know. Today, we see Tamil blooming everywhere. You must all go to the Legislative Assembly. You will hear good Tamil there.”

[Quelle: Sumathi Ramaswamy [சுமதி ராமஸ்வாமி]: Passions of tongue : Language devotion in Tamil India 1891 - 1970. -- Berkeley : Univ. of California Pr., 1997. -- S. 73. -- Fair use]

1967-12-20

Madras (Tamil மதராஸ்): Beginn von Anti-Hindi Protesten.

1968

Einführung der Three-language_formula

"In order to provide facilities for teaching a minority language or mother tongue, State Education Ministers evolved a scheme in 1949. Subsequently, the Union Education Ministry in consultation with States formulated a Three Language Formula. This Formula as enunciated in the National Policy Resolution of 1968 and reiterated in the National Policy on Education 1986 provides Hindi, English and modern Indian language (preferably one of the southern languages) in the Hindi speaking states and Hindi. English and the Regional language in the non-Hindi speaking States. This Formula has created many difficulties for Urdu speakers. The major grievance of Urdu speaking linguistic minority is that their children have been denied the facility of mother tongue instruction. The result is that a large number children of Urdu speakers are learning the regional language instead of the mother tongue as the first language. Accordingly, the Gujral Committee recommended the following modified form of three language formula:
  1. In Hindi speaking States:
    1. Hindi (with Sanskrit as part of the composite course);
    2. Urdu or any other modern Indian language excluding (a) and
    3. English or any other modern European language.
  2. In non-Hindi speaking States:
    1. Regional language;
    2. Hindi;
    3. Urdu or any other modern Indian language excluding (a) and (b); and
    4. English or any other modern European language."

[Quelle: https://web.archive.org/web/20120222082907/http://www.education.nic.in/cd50years/u/47/3X/473X0I01.htm. -- Zugriff am 2018-05-20

1968

Madras (Tamil மதராஸ்): Es erscheint:

Kannadasan (Tamil கண்ணதாசன் - Kaṇṇatācaṉ, 1927 - 1981): கண்ணதாசன் கவிதைகள் - Kaṇṇatācaṉ kavitaikaḷ (Poems of Kannadasan). -- Vol. 3

Tamiḻttāy [Tamil தமிழ்த்தாய் = Mutter Tamil]:

"Would I ever forget you?
Would I cease to sing about you?
Even if they set me on fire,
In the burning flames of the fire,
The world will see only you,
O dear mother of mine!"

(Kannadasan 1968: 89)

[Quelle: Sumathi Ramaswamy [சுமதி ராமஸ்வாமி]: Passions of tongue : Language devotion in Tamil India 1891 - 1970. -- Berkeley : Univ. of California Pr., 1997. -- S. 66. -- Fair use]

1968-01-23

Madras State: Government Resolution zu Hindi als Staatssprache:

"GOVERNMENT RESOLUTION

Language Problem

Hon. Thiru. N.R. Nedunchezhiyan, Minister for Education and Industries, moved the following motion:-

"That the serious situation created in the State as the result of the passing of the Official Languages (Amendment) Act, 1967 and the connected Resolution by the Parliament of India be taken into consideration."

The motion was agreed to and the resolution was taken up for discussion. Amendments to the resolution were moved by Hon. the Chief Minister, Leader of the Opposition, Thiru. A. Balasubramaniam, Thiru P.K. Mookiah Thevar, Dr,. H.V. Hande, Thiru A.R. Marimuthu, Thiru. A.K. Subbiah, Thiru G. Bhuvarahan, Dr. Hanbibulla Baig, Thiru M.P. Sivagnanam, Thiru K.R. Nallasivam and Thiru K.B.S. Mani. All the amendments except that of Hon. the Chief Minister was, by leave of the House, withdrawn. The resolution as amended was put and carried in the following motion:-

'That the serious situation created in the State as the result of the passing of the Official Languages (Amendment) Act, 1967, and the connected Resolution by the Parliament of India, be taken into consideration and on such consideration this House resolves:

WHEREAS the adoption of one of the regional languages alone as the Official Language of India in a land of different languages, culture and civilisation, will, it is felt, disrupt the unity and integrity of India and result in the domination by a region of one language over the regions of other languages:

Tamil and other National languages should be adopted as the officials languages of the Union and the Constitution should be amended accordingly. Till such time as this is achieved, English alone should continue as the Official Language. This House urges that the relevant chapter of the Constitution on Official Language shall be suitable amended.

WHEREAS this House is of opinion that the Official Languages (Amendment) Act, 1967, passed by the Parliament does not serve to achieve the above object, but will lead to the division of India and cause among those connected with the administration of Government two divisions with mutual hatred, confusion and frustration, THIS HOUSE RESOVES TO STRIVE continuously to realise the above objective of the right of every National language;

IN AS MUCH AS the Resolution on the language policy passed along with the Official Languages (Amendment) Act, 1967, causes injustice, disadvantage and additional burden to the people in the non-Hindi regions are in accordance with the unanimous opinion expressed by several political parties that the said Resolution should not be enforced. THIS HOUSE URGES that the Union Government shall forthwith suspend the operation of the said Resolution and devise ways and means to see that the people in the non-Hindi regions are not subject to any disadvantage or additional burden.

THIS HOUSE RESOVES to request the Union Government to convene a high level conference of leaders of all political parties to re-examine the language problem and devise a method to remove the hardship caused by the Language Resolution passed along with the Official Languages (Amendment) Act, 1967.

THIS HOUSE is of opinion that the said Resolution by insisting on the enforcement of the Three-Language Formula, aims to impose Hindi on the people of non-Hindi regions with the ultimate object of making Hindi alone as the sole Official Language.

THIS HOUSE refuses to accept the scheme of Union Government for the imposition of Hindi.

In accordance with the intention of this Government not to implement the Language Resolution of the Union Government and in deference to the views expressed by the people and students of Tamil Nadu, THIS HOUSE RESOLVES;

That the Three-Language Formula shall be scrapped and that Tamil and English alone shall be taught and Hindi shall be eliminated altogether from the curriculum in all the schools in Tamil Nadu:

That in the National Cadet Corps, the "Hindi" words of command shall not be used, and if the Union Government refuses to accept this, such National Cadet Corps shall be disbanded.

THIS HOUSE resolves that expeditious steps be taken up introduce Tamil as medium of instruction in all the colleges and as the language of administration in all the various departments of the State Government within a period of five years.

THIS HOUSE urges that the special status given to Hindi in the Constitution shall be removed and all the Articles in the Constitution wherein an inferior status has been given to the other languages shall be so amended as to accord equal status to all the National Languages of India and that.

The Union Government shall accord equal financial assistance for the development of all the languages specified in the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution'."

[Quelle: Microsoft Word - 4th_assembly_02_session_2nd_meeting (tn.gov.in). -- Fair use]

197x

Pulicat (Tamil பழவேற்காடு):

"And yet, if Tamil’s devotees had accompanied the anthropologist Jacob Pandian in the early 1970s to a high school in Pulicat, outside Madras city, they would have undoubtedly been pleased with the responses of the teenage students there to his questions about their allegiance to Tamil. Early in the century, few had studied Tamil or known much about its history or culture; but these students echoed many of the ideas that the devotional community had been circulating over the past few decades. One of them, a young man of seventeen, even proclaimed,

“There is everything in Tamil, and learning Tamil will make me possess everything I require. If any danger threatens my mother tongue, I will give my life to protect it. My life is interwoven with my mother tongue.”

Another, age sixteen, maintained that

“more than caste, religion, and country I love Tamil. Tamil is one of the greatest languages.”

A Brahman student, whose mother tongue was officially Telugu, nevertheless insisted,

“I consider Tamil as my mother tongue.. .. The culture of India is better than any other cultures of the world.. . . Tamil culture is the greatest in India.”

 A sixteen-year-old Muslim student similarly said,

“I know a little Urdu which is considered the language of Muslims, but I like only Tamil and my love for Tamil is increasing day by day.. . . [T]he ancient Tamil kings, Chera, Chola, and Pandya protected Tamil as though Tamil was their mother” (J. Pandian 1987: 151-64)."

[Quelle: Sumathi Ramaswamy [சுமதி ராமஸ்வாமி]: Passions of tongue : Language devotion in Tamil India 1891 - 1970. -- Berkeley : Univ. of California Pr., 1997. -- S. 248. -- Fair use]

1971

Periyar E. V. Ramasamy (Tamil ஈ. வெ. இராமசாமி, 1879 - 1973) über Astrologie:

"Astrology and Hinduism

Hindus believe in all sorts of things. The deity dancing in men, the spirit of the dead speaking through a medium, ghosts attacking people, causing disease or death through black magic, causing annoyance and misery through the play of little devil, enticing people by mesmerism, shaping of one’s life by past deed, are all strange things in which Hindus hold belief for the purpose of improving their own lives or causing trouble or death to other people’s lives. The amount of time, energy and money wasted by people on these indefinite arts are immeasurable.

Like wise astrology is another art in which Hindus have firm faith, and no inconsiderable time and money are expended on this account. To all intents and purposes, the result of belief in all these false or indefinite arts is suffering and more misery to the people, who resort to these things.

Priest class’s exploitation

The astrologer, the magician, and the temple priest have always been the prime and the foremost exploiters of the people’s greed and superstition. The trades of these three parasites are interconnected and of mutual benefit.

In indicating ahead the bad times and crises of a man, the astrologer directs the victim to a priest to perform special prayers (archana and abisheka) to please the planetary gods (navagraha) and obviate the danger from them. ‘Peace Prayer’ (“Shanti” pujas) to soften or submerge the anger of the gods is the result of the astrologer’s prognostications.

Conspirator’s Peace

In addition the victim of the astrologer will take the services of the magician to cover or controvert the displeasure of the deities. Ordinarily the magician will also be a country quack. In prescribing a course of treatment to soften the angry planet, the quack will prepare a big list of articles to be purchased to last for a span (mandala) of 48 days or so. If the planet to be propitiated for ‘peace’ (“shanti”) happens to be Sani (Saturn) or Sewai (Mars), the course would be more rigorous and expensive. The course will cover lighting the temple premises for a period of 48 days (mandala), reading or hearing Mythology successively for a period of 48 days or half of it.

In the name of the malevolent planets, it will be seen that the astrologer, the magician and the temple priest exploit the people and relieve them of their hard-earned income. In order to obviate the suspicion of self-Interest, the three conspirators will take care to benefit the petty trader and street beggar or sage, for the ‘Peace’ (“Shanti”) course will always mean purchase of numerous things from the grocer and sometimes the feeding of the poor or the mendicant. The victims are therefore encouraged to believe that they are only propitiating the gods and not feeding the conspirators.

What is Astrology?

Astrology is not limited to predicting the future and indicating the good and bad things to come. It goes further to insist the measures to be taken to counter the ill effects of the planetary conjunctions, as if the poor and miserable antidotes taken by man could set aside the powerful and terrible future already drawn and irrevocably set by the planets!

[...]

Past Deed (Karma) and present life

There is also another interesting aspect to his astrological work. Why should a man get a certain conjunction of the planets at the time of this birth? Religionists explain that past karma determines the present life of a man and therefore the particular conjunction of planets. God has therefore to choose correctly a conjunction of planets in accordance with a man’s deed (karma) to project him into the world. The good or bad things said by the astrologer have to be unquestionably accepted by the people because they feel satisfied that what the astrologer said had already been determined for them by their past deed (karma). But it is not clear whether the future is determined by a man’s past deed (karma) or by the conjunction of planets at the time of birth. To get over this difficulty. It has been said that the conjunction of the planets is made to suit the deed (karma). Yet we are also told that karma can be altered by strenuous efforts in the present birth. This only makes confusion worse confounded. One does not know therefore to what extent or degree one’s life is moulded by

  1. the deed (karma) of the past birth,

  2. the position of the planets at the time of birth,

  3. by the position of the planets at the time any important act is attempted in life

  4. by the particular name given to one by his parents,

  5. by the fate or acts of others,

  6. by the action taken in one’s own present life,

  7. by the influence of the dead souls who are being propitiated the living,

  8. by one’s prayer and piety,

  9. (9) by the characteristics obtained by heredity and environment, and

  10. by the action of god himself.

Common proverbs

As already stated, no man can murder another at a particular time unless the murdered person had also been fated to that end by his past deed (karma) and action. The actual responsibility of the parties concerned reduces therefore to negligible proportions. It appears therefore to be absurd either to condemn the man who commits murder or to pity the man who is killed, as neither could help the event. This fatalist theory would only make people either reckless or cowardly.

“Will the god who wrote destiny or death then erase and write a new?”

“Who can overcome fate?”

“Every one must reap the result of his past wrong deed (karma).”

Hell and heaven

When responsibility for all actions is thus shifted to non - personal agencies like fate, one fails to see how people can either be condemned to hell or rewarded by heaven or how they can acquire sin or virtue for their actions. Punishment for crimes committed and rewards given for good done, seem to be meaningless when the responsibility for them is really on outside agencies like fate. Viewed from these angles it would be apparent that there cannot really be a thing called astrology to predict the future events of a man’s life. It is opposed to all scientific knowledge and has no rational basis.

It is true that Hindus, Muslims, Christians and other theistic people believe in astrology. There are atheists also who fall into the trap. This is because astrology has been raised by its protagonists into science and said to be unconnected with god. The real reason why belief is so widespread is because man is essentially a coward, afraid of the world and extremely desirous of the good things of life. He, therefore, seeks to find comfort even where he has no belief and takes the line of least resistance to swim with the majority. This is how superstition gets entrenched and his brain to displace."

[Quelle: COLLECTED WORKS OF PERIYAR E.V.R. (thesatyashodhak.com). -- Fair use]

1971

Die Monatszeitschrift செந்தமிழ் செல்வி (Centamiḻ celvi):

"In Tamilnadu, there is resistance to Tamil music; there is resistance to Tamil as official language; there is resistance to Tamil as medium of instruction in colleges; there is resistance to reconverting the names of places and towns to pure Tamil; there was resistance to naming Madras state as Tamilnadu; there is resistance to the conduct of domestic rituals in Tamil; there is resistance to pure Tamil. When we have resistance like this everywhere, it is no surprise that there is so much opposition to worship in Tamil."

[Quelle: Sumathi Ramaswamy [சுமதி ராமஸ்வாமி]: Passions of tongue : Language devotion in Tamil India 1891 - 1970. -- Berkeley : Univ. of California Pr., 1997. -- S. 142. -- Fair use]

1971

Leningrad: Es erscheint:

Aleksandr Kondratov (Russisch Алекса́ндр Миха́йлович Кондра́тов, 1937 - 1993): Тайны трех океанов. -- Leningrad : Gidrometeoizdat, 1971. -- 245 S. : Il.

Englische Übersetzung:

Aleksandr Kondratov (Russisch Алекса́ндр Миха́йлович Кондра́тов, 1937 - 1993): The riddles of three oceans. -- Moskow : Progress, 1974. -- 267 S. : Ill. -- Online: The Riddles of Three Oceans : Alexander Kondratov : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

Aus dem Inhaltsverzeichnis:

Part Two. THE INDIAN OCEAN
  • Riddles of the Equatorial Race.
  • Gondwanaland and Lemuria.
  • The Cradle of Homo Sapiens.
  • Tamalaham, Nawalam and South Madura.
  • The Sumerians and the Ubaids.
  • Mesopotamia-Bahrein-India.
  • The Land Known as Elam.
  • The “Dravidian Problem”.
  • Ships from the Land of Melukha.
  • Search for the “Sumerian Paradise”.
  • Egypt: Riddles That Outdate the Sphinx.
  • Turkmenistan-Sumer-Lemuria.
  • Islands in the Indian Ocean.
  • The Least Studied Ocean.
  • The Fall of Mohenjo-Daro.
  • Deities of the Proto-Indians.
  • The Secrets of Tantra.
  • From the Buryat Area to Australia.
  • Pages from “Chronicles on Rock”.
  • Did Antarctica Drift Away?


 

"The Cradle of Homo Sapiens

“Many hundreds of thousands of years ago, during an epoch, not yet definitely determinable, of that period of the earth’s history known to geologists as the Tertiary period, most likely towards the end of it, a particularly highly developed race of anthropoid apes lived somewhere in the tropical zone—probably on a great continent that has now sunk to the bottom of the Indian Ocean,” Frederick Engels wrote in his book The Role Played by Labour in the Transition from Ape into Man.

Engels based himself on the writings of Darwin, Huxley and other outstanding scientists of the 19th century who laid the foundations of modern natural history and the sciences dealing with man. Thomas Huxley, an associate of Darwin’s who investigated the origin of man (Huxley is mentioned earlier in this book in connection with the origin of the Tasmanians) assumed that Homo sapiens, that is, man regarded as an organic species, arose on the now sunken continent of Lemuri. As we see from the lines quoted above, Huxley’s view was shared by Frederick Engels, who closely followed the latest findings in all the sciences, from mathematics to paleoanthropology.

Huxley’s hypothesis was developed by another great 19th century biologist, Ernst Haeckel. After a thorough study of the data which the science of the origin of man had accumulated by that time, Haeckel came to the conclusion that there was a missing link in the chain of evolution between the anthropoid ape and Homo sapiens. Haeckel named this hypothetical genus of primates pithecanthropus, or ape-man, who, he believed, had lived in Lemuria and migrated from there north-east to India and South-East Asia, and westwards to Africa.

Before long, Haeckel’s theory received brilliant confirmation when Eugène Dubois, a Dutch anatomist, discovered the bones of a pithecanthropus on the Island of Java. Later, the bones of ape-men were found in Africa and India.

All the above scientists enjoy prestige of the highest order, but their conclusions were arrived at on the basis of the facts available in the 19th century. Since then, geology, paleoanthropology, oceanography and zoology have accumulated hundreds of new facts; what is more, they possess instruments and devices about which scientists could never have dreamed in the last century. And so, how does modern science regard the problem of Lemuria and the origin of man?

In a recent monograph, The Nature of the Earth and the Origin of Man, the Soviet author Y. Reshetov convincingly shows, on the basis of the latest findings in geology, paleontology and paleoanthropology, that Lemuria, the eastern part of Gondwanaland, played a very important part in the development of early man. Reshetov believes that about 100 million years ago Lemuria apparently occupied the region of what is now theMid-Indian-Rise of the Indian Ocean, including all the island archipelagoes and also Madagascar, Ceylon, the Indian subcontinent and the shelf region of the Arabian Sea. From time to time Lemuria was joined to South-East Asia by an isthmus.

The continent of Lemuria was a lowland overgrown with dense tropical forests and bordered by volcanic mountain chains on the south-east, south and north. It provided favourable conditions for the rise and successful development of a new order of mammals, small animals that lived in trees and fed on insects. Gradually these animals became larger and, through the development of keener eyesight and more tenacious claws, which changed into an organ that could seize things, into a hand, they acquired skill in climbing trees. Thus it was that the first primates, the lemurs, or half-monkeys, appeared on the scene between approximately 100 million and 70 million years ago.

Later, about 34 million years ago, big changes took place. Large sections of southern and southeastern Lemuria began to subside; earlier, Madagascar had separated from the continent. Big changes also occurred in the order of halfmonkeys. Some of the lemurs grew to a tremendous size and descended from the trees to the ground in search of food. The skeleton of a gigantic lemur, Megaladapis, one of the most amazing creatures that ever existed on our planet, has been discovered on Madagascar. Imagine a lemur as tall as a man, walking about on its two hind limbs, yet with a long tail and huge round eyes.

This line of evolution did not lead anywhere. It was not the “two-legged lemurs” that became masters of the planet but descendants of the half-monkeys who turned into “full” monkeys, who in turn gave rise to the branch of anthropoid apes. Dryopithecus is the name given to the fossil apes that evolved into the gorillas and chimpanzees of the tropical forests of Africa, on the one hand, and were the forerunners of modern man, on the other. Apes of the genus Sivapithecus are regarded as the most primitive of the dryopithecus apes because they combine features of all the anthropoid apes, whether gorillas, chimpanzees or orangutans.

Reshetov presents, in his monograph, facts indicating that the earliest primitive monkeys and, possibly, their more highly developed descendants as well, who lived in Lemuria, were forced to migrate by the break-up of this continent, the final stage of which took place about 25 million years ago. The waves of migration moved westwards to Africa and northwards to India. Here, says Reshetov,

 “their late descendants, who lived in the north of India from four to four and a half million years ago, went over completely to life on the ground and to making systematic use of natural objects as tools”. T

hese were the “earliest ancestors of man”.

Does the history of Lemuria end on that? Or could the last remnants of the continent have continued to exist in the Indian Ocean for a long time afterwards, not only in the Tertiary period, in which the lemurs and anthropoid apes arose, but also in the Quaternary period, in which man appeared? Could Lemuria have been the cradle of mankind instead of simply a bridgehead from which lemurs and primitive monkeys invaded all the continents (except Australia and Antarctica, those completely isolated parts of submerged Gondwanaland)? Only detailed exploration of the bed of the Indian Ocean, in the region where Lemuria existed, will answer these questions.

The most surprising part of it is that a study of the world’s earliest civilisations reveals a whole series of riddles that can be solved only by using the hypothesis of Lemuria, a large land mass in the Indian Ocean that was inhabited not just by lemurs and not even by pithecanthropi, but by human beings who had reached a high level of civilisation!

Tamalaham, Nawalam and South Madura

Ancient Tamil historians believed that the original home of their people, Tamalaham [தமிழகம்], was situated on the island of Nawalam, “one of the earliest lands to arise near the equator”. Medieval treatises spoke of sanghas , associations made up of the leading poets and scholars. The earliest sanghas arose on the “Southern Continent”, or Lemuria, about 10,000 years ago, in the earliest period of Tamil history. The sanghas ceased to exist after Lemuria and its capital, South Madura, sank into the Indian Ocean.

The Tamils, who have an ancient culture, speak a language allied to the languages of India that form the Dravidian family, spoken today by more than 100 million people. The Dravidians belong to one of the oldest ethnic groups in India. They lived there long before the belligerent nomad tribes of Aryans mentioned in the Rig-Veda, the sacred book of the Hindus, came to the “land of marvels”. Today the Dravidian languages are spoken in Southern India, up to 18°-20°S, but they once covered Central and Northern India as well. Moreover, facts show that several thousand years ago the Dravidian languages were also spoken in Baluchistan and Southern Iran. The Dravidians may have been the first to settle in the Tigris and Euphrates area, preceding the Sumerians, whose civilisation is regarded as the oldest in the world.

Tamil legends claim that the original homeland of the Tamils (and, consequently, of all Dravidians) was once situated in the Indian Ocean but was swallowed up by the waves. The same legends regard the sunken land, Lemuria, to be the cradle of human civilisation. The surprising thing is that at least two out of three of the world’s earliest civilisations turn out to be connected with people who spoke Dravidian languages.

The discovery, in the twenties and thirties, of a proto-Indian civilisation in the valley of the Indus is considered by scientists to be the most important archeological find of the 20th century. Later excavations showed that India’s oldest civilisation covered vast regions to the east and the south including, besides the valley of the Indus, the Kathiawar Peninsula, the environs of the present capital, Delhi, and even the valley of the Ganges. Although not so old, perhaps, as the two earliest civilisations, the Egyptian and Mesopotamian, it covered an area several times larger than Egypt did in her archaic period or the civilisation of Mesopotamia in antiquity.

What people produced the proto-Indian civilisation? The hieroglyphic inscriptions on the large number of seals and amulets found in India’s oldest cities have helped to answer this question. Although no one has yet succeeded in deciphering the writing, a team of Soviet researchers has used electronic computers to establish the family to which the language of the hieroglyphic inscriptions belongs. Their first publication, entitled A Preliminary Report on a Study of Proto-Indian Texts appeared in 1965. The team included M. Probst, a programmer, G. Alexeyev, a paleographer and well-known specialist on ancient scripts, B. Volchok, Indologist, philologist I. Fyodorova, Y. Knorozov, who is an expert on deciphering ancient scripts, and the present writer. The report was prepared under the auspices of the All-Union Institute of Scientific and Technical Information and the Institute of Ethnography of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR.

To begin with, the team used computers to make a statistical analysis of the texts in order to get a picture of the abstract grammar of “language X”, as they called the language of the proto-Indian texts. This means they ascertained whether the language used suffixes, prefixes and infixes (elements inserted in the body of words, as in some languages of the Caucasus), what its main grammatical structures were, and so on.

Next they compared “language X” with other languages. Following the discovery of the hieroglyphic texts scholars had advanced a multitude of hypotheses claiming that the proto-Indian language was related to the most diverse languages of the world, including many languages of India, Asia Minor, the Caucasus, the Himalayas and even the language of the Kets, a people who live along the upper reaches of the river Yenisey in Siberia, and the language of the inhabitants of Easter Island in the Pacific (many of the proto-Indian hieroglyphs are similar in shape to the pictographs of thekohau rongo-rongo script). One by one, Sanskrit, Hittite, Hurrian, Rapanui and many other languages were weeded out of the list of candidates for the honour of being the language spoken by the people who had created India’s oldest civilisation. Finally, only one claimant was left, the Dravidian languages, whose structure turned out to be the closest to that of “language X”. This furnished proof of the hypothesis, advanced by many scholars, that the proto-Indian civilisation was built up by people speaking Dravidian languages (or a Dravidian language). Indeed, a Dravidian “island”, the Brahui language, has been preserved to this day among the sea of Indo-European languages spoken in Northwestern India. It is quite possible that in hoary antiquity the whole of this region was inhabited by peoples who spoke Dravidian languages.

[...]

The “Dravidian Problem”

When and where did the Dravidian parent language arise? When did it begin to disintegrate and send offshoots from the common trunk that later developed into independent languages which could in their turn produce new languages? By employing mathematical methods modern linguistics has been able to establish the period when individual languages began to branch off from the single Dravidian ancestor or, more correctly, proto-Dravidian ancestor, as separate entities. The first was Brahui, the only Dravidian language spoken in Northern India. That happened about 6,000 years ago. It has not yet been established, however, whether proto-Dravidian was formed in India or was brought in from outside.

The more than 500 languages and dialects spoken today on the territory of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh belong to one of three large families: the Indo-European, Munda and Dravidian. Scholars say that the speakers of the Indo-European languages, the legendary Aryans, came to Hindustan (Northern India) in the second millennium B.C. (Where they came from is still debated; the three most probable places are Central Asia, the Black Sea area and Asia Minor.) It was believed for a long time that the dark-skinned tribes speaking the Munda languages were the oldest inhabitants of India. However, the latest linguistic findings show that they appeared in India only 6,000 years ago. They came from the east, from Indo-China, where languages cognate with the Munda languages and dialects are still spoken today.

The most surprising thing is that the Dravidian languages are also alien languages, although they appeared in the Indian subcontinent before the Indo-European languages and possibly before the Munda languages.

We have mentioned the kinship between the Ubaid and Sumerian languages and the Dravidian languages. Place-names in Mesopotamia as well as in Iran, Afghanistan and even the Caucasus can be interpreted if one proceeds from the Dravidian languages, says the Indian scholar T. B. Nayar. Another eminent scholar, N. Lahovary, points out in his book Dravidian Origins and the West that the Caucasian and Dravidian languages have many features in common. Nayar and Lahovary believe that Dravidian tribes reached India in approximately the fourth millennium B.C.

With reference to such a remote period it is better, however, to use the term “proto-Dravidians”, in the same way that “proto-Dravidian languages” is a more precise term than “Dravidian languages”. Many anthropologists believe that the proto-Dravidians differed substantially in appearance from modern Dravidians, that they were people of a lighter complexion and taller stature, for example. There is evidence that the Toda, one of the most mysterious tribes of the Indian subcontinent, who live in the Nilgiri Hills in the middle of Southern India, have preserved features of the ancient proto-Dravidians best of all because they have been in almost total isolation for so many centuries. The language of the Toda is a Dravidian language. The Toda priests employ a special ritual language, the “kworjam” or “kworsham”, in which the names of many deities coincide with those of the ancient gods of Mesopotamia!

The original home of the Dravidians may have been Sumer, Elam, Iran or the Caucasus Mountains, experts say. These hypotheses can be combined into a single, broader hypothesis: that in remote antiquity Mesopotamia, Iran, the Caucasus Mountains and possibly part of Central Asia were inhabited by tribes speaking the Dravidian languages. But was this extensive area the home of the Dravidians?

According to some scholars, the proto-Dravidians, nomads who roamed from the borders of Sumer and Elam to the Amu Darya, the Syr Darya and the Caucasus, reached the Indian subcontinent about 6,000 years ago via convenient mountain passes in Northwestern India. Although the Dravidians are an ancient people of India it is an indisputable fact that they came from somewhere else. The evidence that the Dravidian languages are related to some of the earliest languages of Mesopotamia, Elam and the Caucasus is convincing. This does not necessarily mean, though, that the proto-Dravidians came to India from those places. On the contrary, linguistic data indicate that the Dravidian languages spread from south to north rather than from north to south.

In a survey of the languages of India, Pakistan, Ceylon and Nepal, Soviet Indologist G. Zograf notes that the theory that the Dravidian peoples moved from south to north and not in the opposite direction has gained more and more recognition of late. (For example, tribes speaking Kurukh, a Dravidian language, and living in the northeastern part of Central India, have a legend which says that their ancestors once lived in Southern India.)

This is indeed odd, for south of the Indian subcontinent lies the Indian Ocean, in which the proto-Dravidians could not possibly have developed and then moved northwards into India, Mesopotamia and Elam. But it will not seem so odd if we recall that Lemuria, a land which sank in the Indian Ocean, was situated, say many geologists and oceanographers, in the part of the ocean that divides India from Africa. Early Dravidian legends say the same thing— that their original homeland lay south of the Indian subcontinent and that it sank into the ocean several thousand years ago."

[a.a.O., S. 127 - 134 ; 147 - 151. -- Fair use]

1971

Salem (Tamil சேலம்): Superstition Eradication Conference, organisiert von E. V. Ramasami (Tamil ஈ. வெ. ராமசாமி, 1879 - 1973)

"In 1971 Perivar organized a superstition eradication conference in Salem. In this conference Ram's image was taken in the procession and was beaten by sandals. Hindu deities were obscenely portrayed. The effigy of Rama was burned publicly. Posters revealing the lust of and birth of Hindu deities were found everywhere. Many other photos depicted naked idols and erotic scenes from mythology."

[Quelle: S. Robertson: Periar E.V. Ramasami’s Critique of Priestly Hinduism and its Implications for Social Reforms. -- In:  Religion and Society. --  49-2/3. -- 2004. -- S. 23. -- Fair use]

1971-06-22

Mettupalayam (Tamil மேட்டுப்பாளையம்): Rede von Periyar E. V. Ramasamy (Tamil ஈ. வெ. இராமசாமி, 1879 - 1973) bei der Eröffnungsveranstaltung der Indian Rationalist Association (Tamil இந்தியப் பகுத்தறிவாளர் ஒன்றியம் - Intiyap pakuttaṟivāḷar oṉṟiyam)

"We are for rationalist propaganda. We want the people to live as rational beings. We do not propagate anything unbelievable. We don’t talk anything based on god, children of gods, incarnations, religion, shastras, customs, and so on. We talk of things acceptable to your reason in all matters we talk about. If our society had made use of the rationalist outlook and the sense of reasoning there would be no worry. But our people were prevented to do so. “You must hear what we say. All the things we talk about are the very words of god. I am an incarnation of god. So you should all act as what I say”. Such talks and preaching were necessary to impose their own ideas, with the result that the people were forbidden to think of their own. This practice is not of recent origin. Men were endowed with rationalism from the early days. Yet after 2000, 3000 years we have got to appeal to them once again to think of their own. What a pity!

[...]

It is a good thing foreigners have come to our place. They introduced a few reforms boldly. They were accused of interfering with our religion and shastras. If the Britishers had not come here, we would still continue to be very backward. The vested interests indulged in a series of conjectures against the foreigners. After their exit, no one took up the cause to educate the people. We the Self-Respectors (Rationalists) only volunteered to play a noble part to spread rationalism. Looking at the fraud going on in the name of god and religion and taking into consideration the atrocities played by the religionists and politicians, we have taken the risk to spread the message of rationalism. We find rationalist propaganda as the only solution to liquidate blind beliefs.

[...]

Self-Respect (Rationalist) Movement

What is the doctrine of the Self-Respect (Rationalist) Movement? It is to seek the real causes, which have made us all degraded. It is to find out the factors, which have made us disgraceful. Since we find the creation of god as one of the reasons we want to destroy god. We find the Congress party also as one of the factors which is responsible for our degradation. So we want to destroy Congress. We find Mr. M.K.Gandhi working against our interests. So we want to be rid of his influence. Similarly we find the Brahmin also as a vital force that has brought in our ruination. So we are against them. We find religion as an evil to the society. So we want to destroy religion. The Self-Respect Movement is against all these five evil forces. In short the Self-Respect Movement shoulders the responsibility to crusade against god, religion, Congress, Gandhi and Brahmins. It is these five forces, which propagated pernicious ideas and made our people victims. Our people are made slaves. Unless we destroy these five forces, we cannot make our people better their deteriorating conditions in social life. We are for redeeming the self-respect of the people.

By this I do not mean that we should plunge into politics. Self-Respect Movement is not a political organisation. It is purely a social reform movement. But when these forces stand in the way of our progress, we will have no other go than to oppose them. You just think over what the policy of the Congress party is. Congress is wedded to the policy of safeguarding Gandhi, religion, caste and the status of Brahmins. The Brahmins sought Gandhi’s help for their selfish interest. Because Gandhi talked of reactionary ideas, they made him “Mahatma”. Gandhi responded to the call of Brahmins.

Like a drunken mad man he always talked about god, Shastras, Varnashrama Dharma, Hindu religion and Rama. His propaganda gained some importance. Today all the journals are under the Brahmin monopoly. We don’t have any powerful magazine. Our people are lured by their propaganda. The moment you mention the name of a Brahmin, our people pay respect. That is why we are pledged to expunge Brahminism out of the society. God and religion should be ousted from the society. Gandhi who upholds Varuna Dharma must be opposed. The government which is strongly supporting them with laws must be removed. The Brahmin who is the backbone for the intolerable atrocities perpetrated must be taught a bitter lesson. Things are going on in this shameful manner.

You please think over whether what I say is right or not. Do not blindly believe what I say. I don’t base my views on any shastra or Veda. I simply say what strikes to my mind. You too have the sense of reasoning. Think over. If you find that there is any truth in what I say, take it. Otherwise you can leave it. I do not compel anyone to blindly believe me. I do not want to impose my thoughts on the unwilling people. I am not having any intention to hoodwink anyone. I only remind you that you are also capable of reasoning. You have the powers to analyse matters and assess the good and bad. I would like to stress the fact that you have all become unthinking slaves because of the disastrous machinations of the Brahmins. That is why I stress the importance of reforming the society. Many leaders have chosen some other better walks of life. They are selfish. I stand stubborn in this respect.

[...]

In that case, why should we keep quiet? What is wrong in our telling the fact that he who spreads religion and he who worships god is a fool. Instead of attacking individuals we say that,

  • There is no god!

  • There is no god at all

  • He who created god is a fool.

  • He who propagates god is a rogue.

  • He who worships god is a barbarian.

[...]

Is the God Kind

They say that god is the embodiment of love and kindness. You go and see the gods. Gods have knives, swords, spears, bows and arrows, hammers, sharp weapons and all sorts of fearful instruments in their hands. Are the Hindu gods deceits, robbers, plunderers and murderers? How are we to agree with the statement that the gods are kind? If it is true that Shiva is the embodiment of love, why should he have a spear in his hand? (Laughter). I am not telling these for mere fun. You, the Dravidians must all think of these things very seriously. You must know to what extent we are made fools. We live as men with all these gods. What for these gods? Why these incarnations of gods? Why a god is born to Shiva? What for a Vishnu as god? What have they done?

It is said that they killed many people. It is described that they killed the Asuras, Rakshasas and crores of people; even as a butcher kills innumerable goats. Are the gods butchers and murderers? They call themselves as gods. In the epic Ramayana it is said that Rama killed crores of people. He is said to have lessened the burden of the earth (Booma Devi). What work is mainly alloted to gods in Hinduism? They are merely to kill, murder and massacre. If you begin to think, you will realise many absurdities about these gods, temples and religion.

It is only the fools who would hesitate to think as though these matters are not concerned to them.

[...]

Festivals

We have plenty of temples in India. For every mile you have at least 5 or 6 temples. In every village you have temples. There are even 20,30, 100 gods in every temple. Everyday pooja is performed 3,5,6 times to all these gods.

Apart from this, every year you have festivals 3 or 4 times. Youths long eagerly to see the girls in the festival times. The girls dress up well and come to temples and festivals to woo the lads. It is their meeting that is called festivals. A few years ago to attract crowds, the prostitutes were invited to the temples. In a big temple festival, even 100 prostitutes were invited. Every prostitute used to go to the temple festival in her place. It was the old custom. Nowadays this custom is gradually fading out. We don’t allow our women folk to go out freely. They have the freedom to go to the temples and attend the festivals. What could they do? The males keep quiet when the ladies go to the temples only. They have no other chance to meet youths. So it is natural that temple festivals afford good opportunities for young boys and girls. Moreover all things needed to attract large crowds are arranged. Why so much of publicity for god? Why so much pomp and show? Why these festivals at all?"

[Quelle: COLLECTED WORKS OF PERIYAR E.V.R. (thesatyashodhak.com). -- Fair use]

1971-11-07

Marina Beach, Madras (Tamil மதராஸ்): Aufstellung der Statue von Ilango Adigal (இளங்கோவடிகள்) - Tamilischer Dichter (5. Jahrhundert?). Autor des Silappatikaram (சிலப்பதிகாரம்).

1972

Madras (Tamil மதராஸ்): Es erscheint:

P. Joseph (1909 - 1970): The Dravidian problem in the South Indian culture complex. -- Madras : Orient Longman, 1972. -- 100 S. : Ill.

“Surely the quite respectable antiquity of Tamil literature—the oldest in any living language of the modern world,—can be adequately assured otherwise than by pushing it down the dizzy depths of the prehistoric pluvials to almost the date of man’s debut on the subcontinent, if not the planet.”

[Quelle: Sumathi Ramaswamy [சுமதி ராமஸ்வாமி]: The lost land of Lemuria : Fabulous geographies, catastrophic histories. -- Berkeley : Univ. of California Pr., 2004. -- 334 S. : Ill. -- S. 157. -- Fair use]

1973-09-03

Tod von S. Ilakkuvanar (Tamil சி. இலக்குவனார் - Ci. Ilakkuvaṉār, 1910 - 1973)

Sein Motto:

தமிழ்ப் போரே எநது வாழ்கை போர் - Tamiḻp pōrē enatu vāḻkai pōr = "The war for Tamil is the war for my life" 

"In his memoirs, S. Ilakuvan (1910-1973), a Tamil college teacher who was imprisoned in 1965 for his participation in the anti-Hindi protests, has this to say about the effect on his young mind when he learned in college about the antiquity of Tamil and the wealth of its literature:

The glories of the ancient Tamil land and the eminence of Tamilians captured my heart. I became convinced that classical Tamil (uyartanic cemmoli) had to have been the mother of all the languages of the world. I was saddened that our great and glorious Tamil country has today lost its name, and languishes away as a small part of Madras [Presidency]. I resolved that my life’s mission lay in restoring the rights of the Tamil land, and the preeminence of Tamil. The battle for Tamil is the battle of my life.

(Ilakuvanar 1971: 91)."

[Quelle: Sumathi Ramaswamy [சுமதி ராமஸ்வாமி]: Passions of tongue : Language devotion in Tamil India 1891 - 1970. -- Berkeley : Univ. of California Pr., 1997. -- S. 35. -- Fair use]

1973-12-24

Vellore (Tamil வேலூர்): Tod von Periyar E. V. Ramasamy (Tamil ஈ. வெ. இராமசாமி, 1879 - 1973)


Abb.: Briefmarke, 1978
[GODL]

Periyar E. V. Ramasamy
 
President of Dravidar Kazhagam
In office
27 August 1944 – 24 December 1973
Preceded by Position Established
Succeeded by Annai E. V. R. Maniammai
Head of Justice Party
In office
1939 – 27 August 1944
Inaugural Holder C. Natesa Mudaliar
Preceded by Ramakrishna Ranga Rao of Bobbili
Succeeded by P. T. Rajan
Personal details
Born 17 September 1879
ErodeMadras PresidencyBritish India
(present-day Tamil NaduIndia)
Died 24 December 1973 (aged 94)
VelloreTamil Nadu
India
Resting place Periyar Ninaividam
Nationality Indian
Political party Dravidar Kazhagam
Other political
affiliations
Indian National Congress
Justice Party
Spouse(s)
Occupation
  • Activist
  • politician
  • social reformer
Nickname(s) E.V.R.Vaikom VeerarVenthaadi Venthan

"Finally, I turn to the maverick figure of E. V. Ramasami, the “patriarch” (tantai [தந்தை]) of the Dravidian movement, who is reverentially referred to as Periyar [பெரியார்] (the great one) by his followers and admirers. Perhaps more than any single individual, Ramasami has had the greatest influence, by their own reckoning, on the lives of large numbers of Tamil’s devotees, especially those who write in the Dravidianist idiom. Indeed, in a literary culture given to extravagant adulation and excess, praise of Ramasami is only surpassed by praise of Tamil (Pulamaidasan 1975). To quote a typical example:

You were the courageous one
in the group that sought
the welfare of southern people.

.....

You mastered and embraced
the British language
as the language of science.

You blocked the ascent of Hindi
that had gained a place
in the life of my people.

You are the king who rises up
if Tamils anywhere suffer.

.....

You, who always think
about developing fair Tamil

.....

You . . . came as a son
so fair Tamil could flourish.

(quoted in Richman 1997: 198, 204)

It is ironic that his admirers wrote verses such as this, for the subject of all this adulation had very little patience with a literary form like poetry. Even more ironically, beginning in the 1940s if not earlier, Ramasami launched a sustained attack on the passionate attachment to Tamil that was the binding glue of the devotional community; in the 1950s, he even referred to the language as “primitive” and “barbaric” (Nannan 1993: 52, 138-50; E. V. Ramasami i960: 10-11). This attack peaked in the early 1960s when he published a polemical pamphlet provocatively entitled Tayppal Paittiyam [தாய்ப்பால் பைத்தியம்] (Madness over mother’s milk), in which he boldly satirized the hallowed figure of Tamiḻttāy [தமிழ்த்தாய் = Mutter Tamil] (E. V. Ramasami 1962: 7-17). Nevertheless, devotees who are admirers of Ramasami strategically overlook his denial of Tamil and present him instead as its “savior”—even as one of Tamilttay’s true sons. Indeed, because so many of them profess to be rationalists and atheists, they can no longer call upon Hindu deities to grant protection to their adored subject, Ramasami; instead, they turn to Tamil or Tamilttay to do so. Typically, praise poetry on Ramasami begins with praise of Tamil. For Tamilttay’s devotees, he is one of their own, and one of hers, as well.

And yet all along, Ramasami vigorously resisted being thus appropriated into the Tamil devotional community; hence my characterization of him as “anti-devotee.” So, for instance, in July 1939 at a public meeting in Coimbatore, he announced:

The chairman says I have great devotion for our mother tongue, Tamil. He also said that I toil hard for it. . . .

I do not have any devotion for Tamil, either as mother tongue or as the language of the nation. I am not attached to it because it is a classical language, or because it is an ancient language, or because it was the language spoken by Shiva, or the language bestowed upon us by Agastya. . . . Such an attachment and devotion is foolish. I only have attachment to those things that have qualities that have utility. I do not praise something just because it is my language or my land or my religion or because it is something ancient.

Here, in one sweep, he vigorously set himself in opposition to every assertion made by the devout, across the various regimes of tamiḻppaṟṟu  [தமிழ்ப்பற்று - devotion to Tamil], over the past half century. Indeed, in contrast to its devotees who imagined Tamil as a person—their goddess, their mother, even their beloved lover—Ramasami represented it as a worldly object: an instrument (catanam [சாதனம்]) for communicating one’s thoughts, a tool (karuvi [கருவி]) for expressing ideas. The greatness of a language, he wrote, lay in the ease with which one could express thoughts in and through it, and the efficiency with which one could learn it; its usefulness lay in its appropriateness for any community’s conditions for existence, its compatibility with the environment, and so on (Anaimuthu 1974: 963-69; Kothandaraman 1979). So, in his 1939 speech in Coimbatore, he conceded that if he had any affection (anpu [அன்பு]) at all for Tamil, it is because it had some use for its speakers. Over the following decades, he became less willing to make even this concession. Mudiyarasan recalls that at the Language Teachers Conference in 1948 over which Ramasami presided, he scribbled the words

 “Down with Tamil”

on a piece of paper lying on the table; contrary to the spirit of the conference, Ramasami declared in his own speech,

“First, Tamil has to die.. . . Only English should reign. It is only then that the Tamilian will improve” (Mudiyarasan n.d.: 42-43).

Ramasami himself wrote a few years later that when he made a similar point at another public meeting, some Tamil “fanatics” (moli veriyar [மொழி வெறியர்]) asked him whose son he was. Ramasami replied that if speaking English meant that Tamilians were children of the British, then they should also give up using other “English” products such as the radio and the telephone (E. V. Ramasami 1962: 6-7).

Indeed, in his editorials of early 1967, which were surely a commentary on recent happenings in the state, convulsed as it had been by antiHindi protests, he wrote:

“In our land today, those who have no other means of survival invoke Tamil in order to survive. They declare in frenzy that ‘Tamil has to be protected; We will labor for Tamil; We will give up our lives for Tamil.’ . . . The people [of this land] should not be fooled by this.. . . How can people who live in modern times be seized by this language madness (moli paittiyam [மொழி பைத்தியம்])? The madness over language is like the madness over caste and religion” (Anaimuthu 1974: 983, 1001).

“Why should we get into a frenzy over language?” This was an interesting question to raise at a time when so many had claimed, and acted on the premise, that a life without Tamil was a life not worth living. In the numerous self-reflections that Ramasami offers on his life, “service to Tamil,” that driving imperative of Tamil’s devotees, hardly figures at all—yet another reason for characterizing him as “anti-devotee.” Instead, the burning passion of his life, as he himself declared on many occasions, was to put an end to caste exploitation: specifically, to Brahman denigration of, and domination over, the “non-Brahman,” Dravidian populace (S. Chidambaranar 1971: ix-xxxi, 15-20). It is caste and religion that were his central concerns for most of his life, not language. As he declared in the 1950s,

“language is not so important for man” (E. V. Ramasami 1962: 1).

Not surprisingly, unlike any of its devotees, Ramasami makes no claims to have labored for Tamil. Born in 1879 into a middle-class merchant family in Erode, by his own reckoning he was a rebellious young man, going against the wishes of his orthodox parents on more than one occasion. He dropped out of school—not driven out by poverty, as was the case with so many of Tamil’s devotees, but by choice—and started working for his father. It was not until 1915, when he was in his thirties, that he began to involve himself in civic activities; and here, too, unlike many in the devotional community, his interest lay in local politics, and increasingly in anticolonial politics. By 1920, after serving for two years as chairman of the Erode municipality, he joined the Congress, and by all accounts he ardently threw himself into promoting the end of untouchability, the virtues of khadi (homespun) and teetotalism, and other such staples of Gandhian nationalism. In 1924, he led a campaign in Vaikom (in present-day Kerala) to demand the rescinding of rules prohibiting Untouchables from access to roads near the local temple. He received the sobriquet Vaikkam Virar [வைக்கம் வீரர்], “hero of Vaikom,” for his efforts, and this campaign also consolidated his growing reputation as a man who was radically opposed to Brahmanical privilege and caste exploitation (S. Chidambaranar 1971: 1-88; Visswanathan 17-66).

Soon after, in 1925-26, he parted from the Congress, dissatisfied with the party’s Brahmanical predilections, the most recent illustration of which was its support of separate dining facilities for Brahman students in Subramania Aiyar’s Tamil school in Sheramadevi (discussed earlier). Over the next few years, he began to drift towards the Justice Party, the premier organization that represented “non-Brahman” interests in the Presidency, although there were considerable differences between its conservative, elite agenda and Ramasami’s own rationalist, atheist, iconoclastic imperatives that found expression in the Self-Respect Movement he spearheaded from this time on. He also founded, and often acted as editor of, a number of controversial and radical newspapers and journals, such as the  Kudi Aracu, Vitutalai [விடுதலை], Revolt, and so on, publications which reportedly had a transformative influence on so many of Tamil’s devotees. And yet his own writings are marked by the absence of the literary flourishes and the erudite citations from ancient Tamil literature that characterize devotional writings; on the contrary, Ramasami appears to have taken an almost perverse pleasure in using colloquialisms, koccaittamil [கோச்சாய்த்தமிழ்] (unrefined Tamil), even what some would consider vulgarisms. Ironically, or perhaps deliberately, the Tamil that he employed in his writings was inflected with Sanskrit, his polemical attacks against the language notwithstanding.

Ramasami’s involvement in activities related to Tamil began in the 1930s (Nannan 1993: 11-14). In 1934-35, in essays he published in Pakuttarivu [பகுத்தறிவு] and Kudi Aracu, he called for reform and rationalization of the Tamil script in order to make it more serviceable in printing and typewriting. Although not the first person to call for such a reform, nevertheless he was among the earliest to demonstrate by example: his publications began to use a modified version of the script that was eventually officially adopted by the Tamilnadu state in 1978. In the 1940s and 1950s, Ramasami also supported the demand for use of Tamil in temple worship, the Tamil music (tamil icai [தமிழ் இசை]) movement, the call for renaming Madras state Tamilnadu, the protests over better pay for Tamil teachers, and all other such causes that were so dear to Tamil’s followers (Anaimuthu 1974: 959-63; Kothandaraman 1979; Nambi Arooran 1980: 167-68; Velu and Selvaraji 1989).

Of course, his reputation and fame as devotee of Tamil rests on his spirited opposition to Hindi and on his vigorous leadership of the anti-Hindi movement from the late 1930s through the 1960s. Indeed, as early as 1926, long before the opposition to the language had grown among scholars as well as the general populace, he insisted that Hindi was being favored politically, pedagogically, and financially by the Brahman-dominated Congress party at the expense of Tamil (E. V. Ramasami 1985). Over the next few decades, he vigorously flooded newspapers and magazines with powerful, and often colorful, arguments against the language; led numerous campaigns for picketing government offices, schools teaching Hindi, and business establishments run by North Indians; tarred over Hindi names on official boards in railway stations and post offices; burned the Constitution of India and the national map; and was arrested on numerous occasions for all his efforts. His admirers mention that in this process, not only did he instill Tamil consciousness into the hitherto “sleeping” Dravidian masses, but he was also responsible for politicizing women and drawing them into the Tamil cause.

Through all this, Ramasami paradoxically maintained that he was speaking out against Hindi not because he was a devotee of Tamil, but because he saw Hindi as an agent of continuing Aryan, Brahman, Sanskritic, North Indian imperialism. During the 1930s, he was willing to concede that given their other choices—the irrational and ritualistic Sanskrit, and the “backward” Hindi—Tamilians were much better off with Tamil (Anaimuthu 1974: 968-69, 1763-825). But from the 1940s, even as he was leading the fight against Hindi, he also attacked the enormous political, symbolic, and emotional investment in Tamil made by so many of his fellow Tamil-speaking Dravidians. He ridiculed neo-Shaiva attempts to divinize the language, declaring that if Tamil society had to progress, and if Tamil had to take its place among the modern languages of the world, its intimate ties with religion had to be severed. What use was it to declare that Tamil emerged from Shiva’s drum or that it could magically create a woman out of some old bones, as some of its devotees were wont to do, when the language did not have the capacity to express rational thought? he asked with brutal realism (Anaimuthu 1974: 969, 976-77; E. V. Ramasami i960).

While he was willing to go along with the contestatory classicist and Dravidianist claim that Tamil was more ancient than and a superior language to Sanskrit, he questioned the wisdom of the proposition that the salvation of modern Tamil speakers lay in a return to the imagined perfect past of their Cankam poems. And here, his growing disparagement of Tamil was matched only by his utter scorn for its high literature, whose “classicality” its devotees had so painstakingly constructed over the past few decades. Instead, he insisted that all of Tamil literature—with the possible exception of the Tirukkural—was tainted with Sanskritic ritualism, casteism, gender inequalities, and irrational follies, arguing that it was the very means by which Tamilians had been, and would continue to be, enslaved to Aryanism (Anaimuthu 1974: 959-1002; Nambi Arooran 1980: 164-66; E. V. Ramasami i960).

But above all, Ramasami attacked the feminization of Tamil as a mother figure, that construct so dear to the Indianist and Dravidianist imaginations. What is this “obstinacy” over the mother tongue when the language spoken by our mothers is itself so problematic? he demanded.

“Having given birth to us, if our mother left us in the house of a Telugu speaker or a Muslim, would we not start to speak in Telugu or Urdu? Just because our mother spoke Tamil does that mean that Tamil will spurt from us all by itself?”

Moreover, can the baby talk that mothers use with their infants be used by us as adults? Is this not utter foolishness? he asked (Anaimuthu 1974: 969).

Ramasami thus deconstructed the metaphorical construct of the “mother tongue” to reveal what it was, after all—a metaphor; and in general, there was a remarkable absence in his writings of references to Tamiḻttāy [Tamil தமிழ்த்தாய் = Mutter Tamil], “mother’s milk,” “mother tongue,” and all such staples of tamiḻppaṟṟu  [தமிழ்ப்பற்று - devotion to Tamil]. This is not surprising, for as he asked in his provocative pamphlet, Tayppal Paittiyam [தாய்ப்பால் பைத்தியம்] (Madness over mother’s milk), why is it that Tamilians insist, as if they were “children,” that they would only live on their mother’s milk, Tamil:

“ ‘Mother’s milk is superior’ only if the mother’s milk has power (cakti [சக்தி]) and substance (cattu). When the mother, Tamil, is herself without substance and diseased, how could the child who drinks her milk improve? The mother’s milk will be strong only if the mother herself is well-nourished. Is Tamil well-nourished?” (E. V. Ramasami 1962: 9-10).

Contrary to so many of her devotees who proposed that imbibing Tamilttay’s milk cultivated in the Tamil speaker the true “Tamil” qualities of virtue and chastity, heroism and self-respect, Ramasami argued that Tamilians who had been content with drinking her milk were diseased with irrationalism, superstition, and traditionalism, so much so that one recoiled from the nasty odor of religiosity and orthodoxy that emanated from them. He went on to propose that if Tamilians took to drinking “bottled milk,” that is, English, they would gain in fortitude, independence, and rationality (E. V. Ramasami 1962: 10-12). As in his antireligious and anticlassicist arguments against devotional claims, he invoked the power of modern science and rationalism to undermine the “irrational” follies of its devotees’ attachment to Tamil:

If Tamilttay offers her milk for scientific examination, it will be proven that there is nothing in it that provides strength or fortitude to the body, and the reality of mother’s milk will be revealed. Is it not appropriate that those who praise the virtues of mother’s milk should tell us what its constituents are that supposedly contribute to our well-being? Instead of so doing, they have turned . . . mother’s milk into a capital resource with which they have deluded the people.

(E. V. Ramasami 1962:12-13)

The pamphlet ends by announcing that through deploying the trope of mother’s milk to stir the gullible Tamilians’ devotion to their language, Tamil devotees had only succeeded in turning them into fools. This, Ramasami concluded, was “the real fruit of mother’s milk.”

Ramasami’s most vehement statements about the “madness” over Tamilttay, or the “barbarism” of Tamil, were made in the 1950s and 1960s, when the DMK [Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam] was riding the crest of the popular and political wave in the state by projecting itself as the guardian of the language. In 1949, that party had split off from Ramasami’s DK [Dravidar Kazhagam], which he had created in 1944 out of the ashes of the defunct Justice Party (of which he had been president since 1938). The ostensible occasion for the split was Ramasami’s (second) marriage, at seventy, to Maniyammai, a party worker forty or so years younger than him; the marriage was denounced as a betrayal of Ramasami’s own dearly held principles. But other ideological differences had accumulated between Ramasami and Annadurai, his able lieutenant of many years, including their varying stances on Dravidian and Indian nationalisms, Brahmanism, and electoral politics. As the DMK became more and more vigorous in its espousal of the Tamil cause, Ramasami took an alternate route. After 1953, he even backed the Congress in spite of that party’s reputation as “anti-Tamil,” a reputation that Ramasami himself had helped establish in earlier years (Barnett 1976: 56-84). He also called upon Tamil speakers to abandon Tamil and to embrace English, at one point even urging,

“Speak with your wives and children and servants in English! Give up your infatuation with Tamil (tamilp paittiyam[தமிழ்ப் பைத்தியம்]).. . . Try and live like human beings!” (Anaimuthu 1974: 989).

Where the DMK was willing to concede the usefulness of English in the public sphere, Ramasami insisted that even in the private, intimate space of their homes, Tamilians should abandon their “mother” and adopt English—a stunning repudiation of a fundamental devotional premise.

Yet it would be a mistake to reduce Ramasami’s iconoclastic pronouncements on Tamil to the shifting vagaries of electoral and party politics alone. His dismay over Tamil-speaking Dravidians’ preoccupation with their language cannot be separated from his dominant ideological and political objective through much of the 1940s and early 1950s—the creation of a separate Dravidian nation, in opposition to the Indian nation (M. S. S. Pandian 1993). He argued that their ethnic/racial identity as “Dravidians” was, and should be, more important to Tamilians than their linguistic identity as speakers of Tamil. Unlike language—which he insisted could be picked up today and dropped tomorrow—the bond of blood was durable and distinctive. And yet, paradoxically, he had as encompassing a vision of Tamil as so many of its devotees, for in making his case for a “Dravidian nation,” he suggested there was no distinction between Tamil and the other Dravidian languages:

“Some of our pandits declare that these four languages emerged from one, that they are four sisters that were borne by one mother’s womb. This is utter nonsense. There was only one daughter who was given birth to by Tiravitattay [டிராவிடட்டாய்] [Mother Dravida], and her name is Tamil. We have given it four different names, because the language is spoken in four different places. But in all four places, it is Tamil that is spoken” (E. V. Ramasami 1948: 30).

So, for Ramasami, “Dravidian is Tamil, Tamil is Dravidian”—a sentiment that led him to deny the existence of the non-Tamil languages and their speakers as autonomous entities, and enabled his imagination of a unitary Dravidian nation."

[Quelle: Sumathi Ramaswamy [சுமதி ராமஸ்வாமி]: Passions of tongue : Language devotion in Tamil India 1891 - 1970. -- Berkeley : Univ. of California Pr., 1997. -- S. 233 - 241. -- Fair use]

Ein nicht weiter nachgewiesenes Zitat:

"Men should not touch each other, see each other; and cannot enter temples, fetch water from the village pond: in a land where such inhuman practices are ripe, it is a wonder that the earthquakes have not destroyed us, volcanoes not burnt us; it is a wonder that the earth has not split at its heart and plunged this land into an abyss; that a typhoon has not shattered us. I leave it to you to decide if you still like to trust a divinity that has not punished us thus; if you still consider that God a just God, a Merciful Being. How long do you desire a vast section of the oppressed, the depressed classes to remain patient, peaceful and quiet? Would you consider it wrong if these oppressed were to choose death rather than lead such a life as they do now?"

[Quelle: Sandhya Ravishankar (Tamil சந்தியா ரவிசங்கர்): Karunanidhi : A life in politics. -- HarperCollins, 2019. -- Kindle ed. -- Fair use]

Frau Mythili Sivaraman (Tamil மைதிலி சிவராமன் - Maitili Civarāmaṉ, 1939 - 2021) schreibt 1971 in The Radical Review über Periyar und die Dalits:

"Centred in the non-Brahmin lower castes, Periyar’s movement concerned the Harijans only marginally. Apart from the Vaikkom struggle of the 1920s, Periyar never took up any of the major causes of the Harijans. In fact, his use of the term ‘non-Brahmin’ precludes them. They are addressed as the depressed classes. They are not even described as Tamilians, but as Adi-Dravidas.

Periyar’s attitude to them has been, at best, paternalistic... With increasing urbanization and the spread of literacy, it was inevitable that Brahmin hegemony should crumble and non-Brahmins move into erstwhile Brahmin preserves."

[Quelle: Sandhya Ravishankar (Tamil சந்தியா ரவிசங்கர்): Karunanidhi : A life in politics. -- HarperCollins, 2019. -- Kindle ed. -- Fair use]


Abb.: Anzahl der längeren (45 bis 90 Minuten) Ansprachen von Periyar E. V. Ramasamy ( 1879 - 1973)
zwischen seinem 85. und 91. Lebensjahr
[Datenquelle:
E. Sa. Visswanathan: The political career of E. V. Ramasami Naicker : A study in the politics of Tamilnad 1920 - 1949. -- Thesis: Canberra : Australian National University, 1973. -- S. 93. -- Online: https://openresearch-repository.anu.edu.au/handle/1885/112063?mode=full. -- Fair use]

1974-12-25

Madras (Tamil மதராஸ்): Ravana Leela


Abb.: Poster für Ravanaleela.-- 2016-10-12
[Bildquelle: Periyar was the initiator of Ravan Leela in Tamil Nadu | Forward Press. -- Zugriff am 2021-12-02. -- Fair use]

"About 5,000 workers of the DMK celebrated ‘Ravana Leela’ in Madras (25 December), by burning the effigies of Rama, Sita and Lakshmana as a counter to the Ram Leela celebrations in north India. As the effigies went up in flames, Mrs M. Ramaswamy, the president of the Dravida Kazhagam, and thirteen others were arrested for insulting the religious beliefs of any class. Their demand was to ban the Ram Leela celebrations in New Delhi."

[Quelle: Sabharwal, Gopa [Hindi गोपा सभरवाल]: India since 1947 : the independent years. -- New Delhi : Penguin, 2007. -- ISBN 0-14-310274-5. -- S. 155. -- Fair use]

1975

Markteinführung von Fair & Lovely, jetzt: Glow & Lovely


Abb.: Werbung, 2020
[Fair use]

 

1975

Madras (Tamil மதராஸ்): Es erscheint:

தமிழ்நாட்டு வரலாறு : தொல்பழங்காலம் - Tamiḻnāṭṭu varalāṟu: Tolpaḻaṅkālam  [History of Tamilnadu : Prehistoric times]. -- Madras : தமிழ்நாடு அரசு [Government of Tamil Nadu], 1975

"As a college textbook on Tamilnadu prehistory published by the government in 1975 informed its adult students, the Dravidians of Kumarināṭu [குமரிநாடு] moved to the Mediterranean after the submergence of the ancient continent. Several hundred years later, they were pushed out of the region by the Semitics, and they moved east and entered India through the Himalayan passes in the northwest. Subsequently, they spread out all over India, and eventually one branch moved along the coast to the south to settle there."

[Quelle: Sumathi Ramaswamy [சுமதி ராமஸ்வாமி]: The lost land of Lemuria : Fabulous geographies, catastrophic histories. -- Berkeley : Univ. of California Pr., 2004. -- 334 S. : Ill. -- S. 125. -- Fair use]

1975-11-01

Offizielle Umbenennung von Mysore State in Karnataka (Kannada ಕರ್ನಾಟಕ)

1976-05-05 - 2009-05-18

Sri_Lanka (Singhalesisch ශ්‍රී ලංකා ; Tamil இலங்கை): Liberation_Tigers_of_Tamil_Eelam (Tamil தமிழீழ விடுதலைப் புலிகள் - Tamiḻīḻa viṭutalaip pulikaḷ)

Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam
தமிழீழ விடுதலைப் புலிகள்
Also known as Tamil Tigers
Leader Velupillai Prabhakaran 
Dates of operation 5 May 1976 – 18 May 2009
Motives Creation of an independent state of Tamil Eelam in the north and east of Sri Lanka.
Ideology Tamil nationalism
Separatism
Revolutionary socialism
Secularism
Major actions List of Attacks
Status Inactive. Militarily defeated in May 2009.[1]
Size 18,000, as of 2004, excluding divisions.[2]
Annual revenue US$200–300 million prior to the military defeat.[3][4]
Means of revenue Donations from expatriate Tamils, extortion,[5] shipping, sales of weapons and taxation under LTTE-controlled areas.[citation needed]

1977

Madras (Tamil மதராஸ்): Es erscheint:

Dravidians and Africans / ed. K. P. Aravaanan (Tamil க.ப. அறவாணன் - Ka.Pa. Aṟavāṇaṉ, 1941 - ). -- Madras : Tamil Kootam, 1977. -- 188 S. Ill. -- Auszüge daraus online: Tamilians and Africans - [DOC Document] (vdocuments.net)

1978

Es erscheint:

M. P. Sivagnanam (Tamil ம. பொ. சிவஞானம் - Ma. Po. Civañāṉam, 1906 - 1995): விடுதலைக்குப் பின் தமிழ் வளர்ந்த வரலாறு - Viṭutalaikkup piṉ tamiḻ vaḷarnta varalāṟu (Geschichte der Entwicklung des Tamil nach der Unabhängigkeit). -- Madras, 1978

"A museum commemorating the Cilappatikaram and a memorial celebrating Kattabomman have been built. The names of ministers and homes have been changed. Street names have been changed, and so have the names of towns. But Tamil’s fortunes have not changed. Formerly, Tamiḻttāy [Tamil தமிழ்த்தாய் = Mutter Tamil] was worshipped three times a day. Today, she is worshipped six times a day. She is worshipped with great pomp and splendor. But the chains that fetter her arms and legs have not been destroyed. . . . Tamil will not grow by changing the names of streets, towns, and gardens."

[Quelle: Sumathi Ramaswamy [சுமதி ராமஸ்வாமி]: Passions of tongue : Language devotion in Tamil India 1891 - 1970. -- Berkeley : Univ. of California Pr., 1997. -- S. 75. -- Fair use]

1980-11-16

Madras (Tamil மதராஸ்): Gründung der Thamizhnadu Brahmin Association (Thambraas - Tamil: தமிழ்நாடு பிராமணர் சங்கம் - தாம்ப்ராஸ் - Tamiḻnāṭu pirāmaṇar caṅkam - tāmprās). -- Webpräsenz: http://www.thambraas.com/. -- Zugriff am 2020-06-09

"Thamizhnadu Brahmin Association (Thambraas) was established after several years of patient waiting by the Brahmins of Thamizhnadu. The state of Thamizhnadu has peculiarity of a social evil in the form of concerted Anti-Brahmin movement by certain elements who were the supporters of erstwhile British regime.

When we did not have a forum to either represent or defer ourselves, our detractors have successfully sold lot of information both historical as well as contemporary subjects which affeceted the minds of our younger generation to wonder which are the allegations could be true !"

[Quelle: http://www.thambraas.com/newsDetail.php?id=2. -- Zugriff am 2020-06-09. -- Fair use]

 
Abb.: Titelblatt des Thambraas Magazine, 2018-05
[Fair use]

1981


Abb.: Poster Tamiḻttāy [Tamil தமிழ்த்தாய் = Mutter Tamil], 1981
[Fair use]

1981

Madras (Tamil மதராஸ்): Es erscheint:

இந்திய வரலாறு 6 - Intiya varalāṟu 6 [History of India for class 6]. -- Madras : Tamil Nadu Text Book Society, 1984

"Indeed, as recently as 1981, a history textbook in Tamil, published under the auspices of the government of Tamilnadu for sixth-grade students, tells them in the course of a discussion of prehistoric Aryans and Dravidians that

“some say that in the Indian Ocean several thousand years ago there was a vast landmass called Ilemuriakkantam [இலெமூரியாக்கண்டம்] [Lemuria continent], and that was the birth place of Dravidians.”"

[Quelle: Sumathi Ramaswamy [சுமதி ராமஸ்வாமி]: The lost land of Lemuria : Fabulous geographies, catastrophic histories. -- Berkeley : Univ. of California Pr., 2004. -- 334 S. : Ill. -- S. 102. -- Fair use]

 

1981-01

Madurai (Tamil மதுரை): 5th International Conference of Tamil Studies.

Anlässlich dieser Konferenz Premiere des Kurzfilms குமரிக்கண்டம் = Kumarikkaṇṭam in Tamil und Englisch.

"Indeed, in January 1981, during the Fifth International Conference of Tamil Studies held in historic Madurai, a short documentary tided “Kumarikkaṇṭam” was screened in Tamil and English. Produced with the financial support of the Tamilnadu government and the personal backing of Chief Minister M. G. Ramachandran, the documentary recounts an ancient tale of origins in the paleo-scientific language of modernity. It traces the birth of Tamil and its literature to the very beginning of time on Lemuria, referred to also by its Tamil name Kumarikkaṇṭam. In the documentary’s recounting, the paleo-history of the earth turns around the Tamil land, language, and literature. In such a planetary vision, the history of Tamil and its modem speakers is both deeply temporalized and ambitiously spatialized: the entire world was Tamil’s domain, once upon a time, millions of years ago. With the making of this film, and with the pedagogical circulation of Lemuria in schools and colleges, Sclater’s lost continent has been officially installed in Tamil collective memory at the heart of a catastrophic narrative about the loss of the prelapsarian [vor dem Sündenfall] Tamil past and self. This is, of course, in striking contrast to its presence in Euro-America, where it has been largely confined to the occasional scientific conjecture or to place-making on the occult fringe."

[...]

"The 1981 documentary film is the most elaborate in this regard. The camera draws us into the antediluvial [vor-sintflutlich] Pandyan capital of Tenmaturai [தென்மதுரை], filled with luxurious mansions and pleasant playgrounds, and zooms in on the court of Kalcina Valuti, lord of Kumarikkaṇṭam. The commentator introduces him as the king who “established the first Tamil cankam [சங்கம்], an academy to promote Tamil, the first of its kind, a concept so far ahead of the times, a rare new thought indeed. Great poets and scholars served the academy, to promote Tamil in its many art forms like literature, music, and drama.” After a musical interlude, the monarch is shown bestowing generous  gifts on scholars and poets. The documentary goes on to present Kalcina Valuti’s successors as helping their subjects make their land fertile for cultivation, and as sailing with their merchants “on voyages to distant lands” from where they bring back all manner of riches.

After the deluge that destroyed Tenmaturai and its learned academy, the commentator notes that Pandyan kings founded Kapatapuram [கபாடபுரம்], the new capital of Kumarināṭu [குமரிநாடு]:

In Kapatapuram, the second Tamil Sangam was established by Pandyan king Venterceliyan. Succeeding kings nourished the cankam that flourished for 3700 years.
One of the great Pandyan kings, Tirumaran [was] a great lover and patron of Tamil.
He respected his language more than his regal status.
Great works were written during this period on a variety of subjects like logic, medicine, mathematics, astronomy, and navigation.
Foreign merchants visited Kumarinatu, not only to buy pearls, ivory and the like, but also to acquire works of Tamil literature whose fame had crossed the ocean.

This idyllic life was brought to a cruel end by yet another burst of oceanic fury, and the city of Kapatapuram was flooded. The camera zooms in on the agonized king Tirumaran, and the commentator intones:

Human beings, however high, were helpless.
The king was losing his riches, yet he did not care.
Come what might, he was determined to save the precious gems of Tamil literature, for the benefit of prosperity.

The commentator pauses here, as the film shows the Pandyan king, oblivious to the crashing waves and flooding waters, gathering up some palm-leaf manuscripts. The commentary continues:

The king has lost his kith, kin and all, yet he fought to live, not to save himself but something more precious than his life, the gems of Tamil literature.
Alone, anguished, but not awed, bereft of all pomp and circumstance, he struggled, unmindful of injuries and hurdles, to save his language, Tamil.
His body was injured, but not his spirit.

Here, the film resorts to some dramatic footage of the Pandyan king running across the countryside barefoot and injured, his clothes and jewels in disarray. He finally reaches the city of (postdiluvial) Madurai, tired but happy. The commentator continues, as the film draws to a resounding end:

The history of the Tamil cankam began on the banks of River Pahruli, flowed beside River Kumari, and reached Madurai of today on the banks of River Vaigai. . . .

King Tirumaran offered at the feet of Mother Tamil the rare works of Tamil literature he had salvaged.
Tears of joy brightened his happy eyes.
He continued to serve Tamil, and founded the third Tamil
cankam. . . .
Long live Tamil!

Although the documentary appears astonishing in its unabashed nostalgia for kingship and monarchical rule, this filmic fantasy only builds upon similar labors of loss around prelapsarian Pandyan rule from early in the twentieth century. In and of itself, this fantasy seems utterly at odds with the demand for democratic forms of rule and for the abolition of hierarchies of all manner that have been such staples of the political culture of the region through much of that same century."

[Quelle: Sumathi Ramaswamy [சுமதி ராமஸ்வாமி]: The lost land of Lemuria : Fabulous geographies, catastrophic histories. -- Berkeley : Univ. of California Pr., 2004. -- 334 S. : Ill. -- S. 97f. ; 127ff. -- Fair use]

"Directed by P. Nilakantan [P. Neelakantan] (who had had a long career in commercial Tamil films), the script for the film was written by R. Mathivanan [ஆர். மதிவாணன்], a Tamil scholar best known for his etymological work on Tamil who has also written extensively on Lemuria (see, e.g., Mathivanan 1977; Ramachandran and Mathivanan 1991). Produced at a cost of about 12,00,000 rupees, the documentary has since its original screening been shown on television in India, as well as at several other international Tamil conferences. At least one viewer was inspired to his own labors of loss over the hapless homeland (Ganapathy 1982, 1984). Another viewer wrote approvingly that the film would remind his fellow Tamils of their glorious lost past (Singaravelan 1981, 47-52). For a less enthusiastic appreciation, see Ilantiraiyan 1981, 75-77.

In demonstrating the antediluvian origins and history of Tamil, the documentary remarkably combines a mobilist conception of the creation of the earth’s continents based on drift theory with an earlier, fixist notion based on submerged continents, thus representing the complex hybridization at their postcolonial address of a century of fraught metropolitan debates over the history of Earth and the creation of its landmasses. Not least, the film is noteworthy for graphically presenting the catastrophic loss of Lemuria to the ravages of the ocean.

The documentary was not the only presentation on Lemuria at the conference. A Tamil translation of the Russian Alexander Kondratov's The Riddle of the Three Oceans (1974), one of the most quoted books in Tamil labors of loss, was also released to mark the occasion (Kondratov 1995 [இந்துமாக்கடல் மர்மங்கள் : லெமூரியக் கண்டம் / übersetzt von R. Parthasarathy]), and several featured speakers traced the origin of Tamil to the lost continent (see, e.g., Devaneyan 1981; Mahalingam 1981a; Pillay 1981b). Indeed, K. K. Pillay (1905-1981), an influential historian who once headed the history department at the University of Madras, was moved to declare,

“It is no chauvinism to state that the ancestors of the Tamils were among the earliest people of the world. This view is based by certain oceanographers and ethnologists on the so-called Lemurian theory” (Pillay 1981b, 36).

Earlier, he would have been more skeptical of such a stance (see, e.g., Pillay 1957b; Pillay 1975, 41-55)."

[Quelle: Sumathi Ramaswamy [சுமதி ராமஸ்வாமி]: The lost land of Lemuria : Fabulous geographies, catastrophic histories. -- Berkeley : Univ. of California Pr., 2004. -- 334 S. : Ill. -- S. 264f., Anm. 5. -- Fair use]

1981-01-15

Madurai (Tamil மதுரை): Tod von Devaneya Pavanar (Tamil தேவநேயப் பாவாணர் - Tēvanēyap Pāvāṇar, 1902 - 1981)


Abb.: Briefmarke, 2006
[Wikimedia / GODL]

Devaneya Pavanar
 

Pavanar on a 2006 stamp of India

Born 7 February 1902
SankarankovilTamil Nadu
Died 15 January 1981 (aged 78)
Madurai, Tamil Nadu, India
Occupation Author, Tamil ActivistEtymologist

 

"A very different model of scholarly devotion is offered by the life of G. Devaneyan, referred to in devotional circles as pavanar [பாவாணர்], “the poet.” The author of numerous books, essays, and poems, most of which are in the contestatory classicist idiom, Devaneyan is best known for his etymological researches on Tamil, and for his attempts to prove that Tamilnadu (or Kumari Nadu [குமரி நாடு], as he called it) had been the site of the birth of humanity and that Tamil speakers were the first humans (Devaneyan 1972). Most of the trials and tribulations that Devaneyan faced in practicing his tamiḻppaṟṟu  [தமிழ்ப்பற்று - devotion to Tamil] followed from having to combat not just the difficulties of abject poverty, but the social stigma of hailing from a very low-caste family recently converted to Christianity. Born in 1902 in the small village of Sankaranayinarkoil in Tirunelveli district, Devaneyan tells us that when he was a high school student, he had memorized all of Shakespeare’s plays and desired to become an English professor at Oxford. And then in 1918-20, he read history and Tamil, and became devoted to the latter. Poverty prevented him from pursuing his higher education, and he began to work as a Tamil schoolteacher in Ambur, North Arcot. But this did not deter him from later passing the Tamil examinations administered by the Madurai Tamil Sangam in 1924 and by the Shaiva Siddhanta Kazhagam in 1926, which gave him the title of pulavar, “scholar.” Recognizing the value placed on formal university degrees, however, he also went on to earn a master’s degree in Tamil from Madras University in 1944. Meanwhile, he held a variety of teaching jobs, mostly poorly paid in small-town schools; starting in

1944, he found a period of stable security for about twelve years, teaching Tamil in Salem.

The one theme that runs through the various biographies on him, written by fellow devotees, is the stark state of poverty in which he lived; often he did not have enough money even to feed his growing family, let alone to do research and publish his works (Tamilkudimagan 1985; Tamilmallan 1989). In his letters to fellow scholars, he frequently laments over his material conditions and writes piteously about visits to bookstores where, even after striking a hard bargain that brought the price of a book down, he still could not afford to purchase it and would have to go home empty-handed (Ilankumaran 1985: 6). Although he found an outlet for publishing his books in the Shaiva Siddhanta Kazhagam, he also published quite a few of his researches at his own expense. For, as his biographers tell us, he could never let economic considerations stand in the way of his tamilpparru (Tamilmallan 1989: 45-52). In a letter to a friend in 1964, Devaneyan tells him that he would go anywhere if invited to speak publicly on the linguistic problems facing Tamilians, even if he were not paid for his lecture. He was even willing to forgo being reimbursed for travel expenses, when it was Tamil’s future that was at stake, for as he writes in another letter,

“the life-breath of the Tamilian is Tamil” (Ilankumaran 1985: 9, 79).

Such an attitude was forged fairly early in his life. For instance, in a 1937 letter to a fellow devotee, he writes,

“As long as we live, we ought to not let Tamil decline” (Ilankumaran 1985: 11).

On many occasions, he tells us that his duty to Tamil was to rescue it from the clutches of Sanskrit and to make the world accept what he believed to be the first principle that guided his own life: namely, that Tamil was the first language of the world and the parent of them all. It is for this purpose that he believed he had been created by God (Ilankumaran 1985: 20, 57, 80, 110).

Such statements of devotion are also interspersed with comments of despair and frustration. In 1964, he laments that if he had devoted himself as passionately to English as to Tamil, he would have been a respected professor at Oxford.

“The extent to which I have grieved and suffered because of Tamil is no laughing matter” (Ilankumaran 1985: 121).

On another occasion, he asked,

 “What does it matter if Sankaralinga Nadar fasted [to death]? What does it matter if Chinnasami immolated himself ? The Tamilian will not heed or improve” (Ilankumaran 1985: 14).

The despair expressed by Devaneyan echoed that of so many devotees who came to hold that a life dedicated to the Tamil cause had brought little material comfort, and even fewer social benefits. His wife’s death in 1963 after a lingering illness left him both grieving and guilt-stricken, for he had had no money to buy medicines that might have saved her life. For much of his lifetime, he had few decent clothes to wear, and on occasion he survived for days on gruel and raw onions (Ilankumaran 1985: 110; Tamilmallan 1989: 48-52).

And yet, we are told that even when he was offered a way out of such abject poverty, he refused to take it, because it involved bringing humiliation to Tamil. In 1956, he was hired by Annamalai University to produce a Tamil etymological dictionary. He had to report his findings to a committee headed by Suniti Kumar Chatterjee, the well-known Bengali linguist who, despite not knowing Tamil, was put in this position of power. Devaneyan’s opinions on Tamil and its relationship to Sanskrit were at odds with Chatterjee’s, and when asked to change his views, he refused.

“Why should we fear to tell the truth about Tamil? How long should we Tamilians live in fear and servitude in this fashion?. ... It is the duty of every researcher to reveal the truth, whatever may be its consequences. The rescuing of Tamil from its cruel subjection to Sanskrit is the purpose of my life. This is why I have been created by God” (quoted in Tamilkudimagan 1985: 16-17).

In 1961, he resigned his job (or was relieved of it, by other accounts) and returned to his former hand-to-mouth existence. In words that have been repeated many times by his fellow devotees, he is supposed to have declared,

“I am poor; I have a wife and children; but I also have honor” (quoted in Tamilkudimagan 1985: 17).

As his biographers tell us, rather than betray Tamil and take care of himself, he chose to live heroically, as a poor but honorable and devoted Tamilian."

[Quelle: Sumathi Ramaswamy [சுமதி ராமஸ்வாமி]: Passions of tongue : Language devotion in Tamil India 1891 - 1970. -- Berkeley : Univ. of California Pr., 1997. -- S. 213ff. -- Fair use]

"The writings of Devaneyan Pavanar (1908-81)—a product of the “Pure Tamil” movement—are the most dramatic examples of this catastrophic view of language loss. In a spate of essays and books, Devaneyan wrote agonizingly about the linguistic consequences of the submergence of the prelapsarian Kumarinatu, which he held responsible for everything from the degeneration of Tamil’s originally pure and true grammar to semantic impurities that crept into the perfect language, and most intolerable of all, to its increasing Sanskritization.126 So, for devotees like Devaneyan, the tragedy of loss of the original homeland is further heightened by the fact that the Tamilian ceased to live in a state of pristine purity, as words from other languages flooded into their perfect Tamil, contaminating it—and its speakers—forever. Further, Tamil ceased to be the sovereign language it had been on Kumarinatu, and correspondingly, Tamil speakers ceased to be independent as well."

[Quelle: Sumathi Ramaswamy [சுமதி ராமஸ்வாமி]: The lost land of Lemuria : Fabulous geographies, catastrophic histories. -- Berkeley : Univ. of California Pr., 2004. -- 334 S. : Ill. -- S. 122. -- Fair use]

1983-07-23 - 2009-05-18

Sri_Lanka (Singhalesisch ශ්‍රී ලංකා ; Tamil இலங்கை): Bürgerkrieg (Tamil ஈழப் போர் - ஈழப் போர் ; Singhalesisch ශ්‍රී ලංකාවේ සිවිල් යුද්ධය - śrī laṁkāvē sivil yuddhaya)

1983-07-24 - 1983-07-30

Sri_Lanka (Singhalesisch ශ්‍රී ලංකා ; Tamil இலங்கை): Black_July (Tamil கறுப்பு யூலை - Kaṟuppu yūlai). 400 bis 3.000 Tote. Tausende Tamilen fliehen nach Indien

1984

Madras (Tamil மதராஸ்): Es erscheint:

K. P. Aravaanan (Tamil க.ப. அறவாணன் - Ka.Pa. Aṟavāṇaṉ, 1941 - ): தமிழரின் தாயகம் - Tamiḻariṉ tāyakam [Motherland of the Tamilians]. -- Madras : International Institute of Tamil Studies, 1984

"Tamil literary evidence allies Tamils with the black races. The three black races—Dravidians, Australians and Africans—ought to have separated from the same ancestor. This separation took place several hundreds of years ago. This primordial ancestor must have lived on the continent of Kumarikkaṇṭam [குமரிக்கண்டம்]. The Dravidians who lived in the ancestral homeland of Kumari moved north, Australians moved east and the Africans moved south west. They separated from each other several thousands of years ago. Distance as well as separation by the ocean brought several differences between them and undermined their primordial unity. Based on those differences, it is not possible to say that they are separate races."

[Quelle: Sumathi Ramaswamy [சுமதி ராமஸ்வாமி]: The lost land of Lemuria : Fabulous geographies, catastrophic histories. -- Berkeley : Univ. of California Pr., 2004. -- 334 S. : Ill. -- S. 125. -- Fair use]

1984-03-31

Es erscheint:

Shekhar Gupta (Hindi शेखर गुप्ता, 1957 - ): Sri Lanka rebels: Ominous presence in Tamil Nadu - Investigation News - Issue Date: Mar 31, 1984 (indiatoday.in)

"Three kilometres down the road to Karaikal from the ancient Tamil Nadu town of Kumbakonam, a couple of hundred men occupying the makeshift camp have no time for passing traffic. Dressed in shorts, young men - often holding lathis - are intent on their drills and exercises. The uninitiated could easily mistake it for a typical RSS [Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh] shakha.

But the locals know better. The odd one among them has had a glimpse of rifles being carried in bundles by the camp inmates who seem to be rather fond of leaving in small batches for long journeys. These are no ordinary excursions.

The batches, led by seasoned guerrillas or retired Indian military officers, make for the obscure forests and wastelands along the coast in Ramanathapuram district. There, among the casuarinas, the real training and battle innoculation begins.

For, insurgents, there could not have been a better sanctuary. The local Tamil politician is sympathetic to the Sri Lankan Tamils and if ever the Central Government decided to disown them, it would raise a  hornets' nest in the ethnically conscious state. With telephones, post office boxes and even colour calendars proclaiming their cause, they must be some of the queerest insurgents in the world.

The vast, sparsely populated stretch along the coast has now become a veritable guerrilla area. But unlike the tribal bush-fighters in the North-east, their guns are not trained on India.

Their target is Sri Lanka. Or more precisely, the northern Tamil majority region. Their objective: an independent, sovereign territory of Tamil Eelam.

In both geographic and strategic terms', they could not have chosen a better training ground. The terrain is the same as on their home ground and there is no need of simulation. In the words of a rebel leader:

"The region is obscure, people and government sympathetic and our dreamland of Eelam right across the sea, just two hours by motorboat. Could we have found a better place?

In fact, from Point Calimere which sticks out into the Indian Ocean like a dagger midway through the Ramanathapuram coast, Jaffna - the Tamil heartland in Sri Lanka - is just a little over an hour away in a good motorboat. And the rebels have plenty of these as is evident from the regular boat traffic between Jaffna and the Indian coast, running cargoes of guns and men.

The camp near Kumbakonam, like the one close to Meenambakkam on the outskirts of Madras, is just one of the dozens set up by the Sri Lankan Tamil insurgents deep inside Tamil Nadu, where new recruits get ideological grounding by rebel theoreticians and elementary lessons in the use of firearms.

Initial lessons over, they are split into small batches and sent for advanced training to the coast. Underground and Indian intelligence sources estimate that nearly 2,000 armed men, belonging to the various groups of Tamil insurgents, are now ready for battle.

 
"We must unite now. For almost 18 months we were not even on talking terms. But now we have established contact with some of the Tigers."
-
Uma Maheswaran, leader of the People's Liberation Organisation of Tamil Eelam (PLOT)

Yet another 2,000-3,000 have been trained, but wait for arms shipments from "foreign sources", basically the Soviet-backed leftist guerrilla groups like the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) and Zimbabwean radicals.

Armed with Kalashnikovs and G-3 [HK G3] rifles and driven by a strong emotion of ethnicity with a dash of left revolutionary fervour, they are keyed up to strike. Inside Madras, the only thing not visible are the guns. But the city abounds with Sri Lankan Tamil insurgents of numerous denominations running training camps in' the Tamil Nadu hinterland and plotting to force an armed showdown with the Government in Sri Lanka, scarred by repeated Sinhala-Tamil ethnic violence.

The rebels, most of whom escaped by boats from Jaffna in the wake of the July 1983 massacres [Black July], are now all over Tamil Nadu. For their leaders, Madras has become a kind of tactical headquarters. They operate out of rooms in the legislators' hostel, allotted in the names of sympathetic MLA's and privately hired houses, while the Government is most accommodating about visa and immigration regulations - some of them even go abroad on Indian passports.

The desolate, unguarded coastline along the Ramanathapuram district in Tamil Nadu is their playground. Rebels of various groups run regular motor-boat ferries between the Indian cost and Jaffna, using the Palk Straits unmolested. The Sri Lankan Navy has just six seaworthy gunboats which generally confine themselves to Trincomalee.

 
"India's security is linked to our liberation. So while India determines the politics, we play the role of the good soldiers."
-
Sri Sabaratnam alias Tall Sri, leader of the Tamil Eelam Liberation Organisation (TELO)

Besides, the width of the Palk Straits is just about 35 km - the maritime boundaries overlap - and the Sri Lankans barely have a chance. The Indian Navy and Coast Guard, it seems, couldn't care less.

While the Government turns a Nelson's eye to the goings-on, the Sri Lankan rebels have also, in a way, helped resettle Indian Tamil ex-servicemen. A large number of them, particularly those who served in combat units, have been hired as instructors at the camps, and at higher salaries, in some cases, than they drew from the Indian Army.

For insurgents, there could not have been a better sanctuary. The local Tamil politician is sympathetic towards the Sri Lankan Tamils and if ever the Central Government decided to disown them, it would raise a hornets' nest in the ethnically conscious state.

With telephones, post office box numbers and even multi-page colour calendars proclaiming their cause, the Sri Lankan Tamils must be some of the queerest insurgents in the world. But there is no underestimating their capabilities and indications are that at least the Sri Lanka Government is not making that mistake.

Across the Palk Straits, the Sri Lanka Government is preparing to meet a full-scale, guerrilla conflagration. A strong indication is the posting to Jaffna last fortnight of Brigadier Nalin Seneviratne - a tough soldier - as the coordinating officer, with a brief to flush out the rebels.

 
"Silent support is hardly sufficient when the Sinhala Government is out to annihilate all the Tamils."
- Era Janarthanan, former chief whip of the AIADMK [
All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam]

The Government also proposes to replace Devanesan Nessiah, a Tamil, with Sinhala Camillius Fernando, for "better coordination". The buildup is reflected in the arrest of five Eelam guerrillas, allegedly trained in India in "battlecraft, sabotage and marine commando warfare".

Even more tellingly, news came in of the killing, in quick succession, of at least six guerrillas by the recently formed anti-terrorist squads of the Sri Lanka Army. The feverish Sri Lankan efforts were part of a hurriedly prepared plan to meet the growing threat.

The guerrillas have the potential to raise an underground army of about 5,000 in a few months. This could give gory expression to the long-standing secessionist spirit in the island state, heightened by the July 1983 riots in which thousands of Tamils were killed by armed Sinhala mobs, including mutinous soldiers.

That, indeed, was the turning point, when even those Tamils who had been sceptical of the prospects of secessionism began to take the rebellion more seriously. It was in a realistic appreciation of this growing menace that the Sri Lanka Government, after raising the bogey of Indian armed intervention the world over, sought Mrs Gandhi's assistance for a negotiated solution to the Tamil problem.

India responded by assigning top-flight diplomat, G. Parthasarathy, to organise tripartite talks involving Jayewardene's United National Party (UNP), Mrs Bandaranaike's Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) and the Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF). But now, with the withdrawal of the SLFP; the talks are in the doldrums and even the pacifist minority among Tamil leaders are talking increasingly of extreme solutions.

Yet, while bank-heists and hit-and-run attacks are on the increase, the rebels do not seem to want a frontal fight right away. With the intensification of guerrilla training and gun-running, they were in a hurry to complete the buildup before the Sri Lankan Government forced a showdown in order to draw them out while they were still ill-prepared and divided, or block conduits linking Jaffna with Tamil Nadu.

The rebels were digging in, militarily and politically. Typical of their extreme leftist orientation, they wanted to do adequate political groundwork to create conditions where India could be forced to actively aid their campaign.

For the moment, the rebel strategy is to build up military strength while intensifying its propaganda war against not just the Sri Lanka Government but also the TULF and the round-table conference.

"We couldn't care less about both the TULF and the Government," said rebel ideologue S. Ruthramoorthy, adding for effect: "The problem is the TULF are election-oriented while we are liberation-oriented."

Nothing symbolises this buildup better than the feverish activity in a small house in a corner of the upper middle class Mahalingapuram locality in Madras. There is no signboard that says so but almost everyone around knows that No. 9, Narayanan Street, houses the Tamil Information Centre and is run by the skinny, wiry figure of S. Sivanayagam, former editor of Saturday Review, the pro-Tamil weekly that the Sri Lanka Government banned in July 1983.

Sivanayagam leads a team of over a dozen men and women, mainly Tamil expatriates manning desks and typewriters churning out publicity material for distribution around the world. He sits in his first floor office, in constant touch with the leaders of various rebel groups. "We are neutral. This centre is the meeting point for everyone," he says pointing at the wall displaying the calendars of all the rebel groups.

But he is certainly not on the side of the pacifists and asserts: "The TULF are just chasing behind events. This is just a bid to sustain a fiction. They have caught the tiger by the tail." This pessimism has even seeped into the ranks of the TULF itself.

V. Yogeswaran, former TULF MP morosely admitted, sitting in his Barnaby Avenue house in Madras: "The talks were never the same once the SLFP walked out. The whole wretched thing was written on water." With this cynicism almost total, Sri Lanka seems poised on the brink of a prolonged civil strife.

Gearing up for that eventuality are the highly indoctrinated men of over half-a-dozen organisations, with varying strengths in terms of arms and manpower. The more significant ones are:

  • Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) better known as Tamil Tigers. This, the oldest, largest and militarily the most highly organised group, is led by 29-year-old Velupillai Prabhakaran and boasts of widespread foreign links.
  • Tamil Eelam Army (TEA) is led by Thambipillai Maheswaran [Panagoda Maheswaran], a final-year engineering drop-out, educated in the United Kingdom. The relatively new and small organisation made a sensation last month with a Rs 50 million bank robbery at Kattankudy near Batticaloa last month.
  • Eelam Research Organisation (EROS) is a London-based body of Trotskyite expatriates who originally provided ideological content and international contacts to the Tamil insurgency under the leadership of E. Ratnasabapathy.
  • Eelam People's Revolutionary Liberation Front (EPRLF) is a body with pretensions more intellectual than military. Its more significant unit is the General Union of Eelam Students (GUES), which brings together Tamil students abroad.

While the leaders of each organisation make various claims, intelligence and underground sources estimate their combined strength at around 5,000 - only one-third of which is armed at present. The bulk of the armed personnel belong to the "Tigers", followed by PLOT and then the others and the majority of them are based in India. Most organisations are left-oriented and have contacts with other leftist guerrilla organisations all over the world.

Both LTTE and PLOT have central fighting cores trained by the PLO. Says Balasingham of the Tigers:

"Our basic alliance is still with the PLO [Palestine Liberation Organization]. But we maintain active contact with the other groups like the Zimbabwe African People's Union (ZAPU), the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) and the African National Congress (ANC)."

THE PLO-Tamil nexus is even more marked in the case of plot. Its chief, Uma Maheswaran, was in the first batch to go for training to Lebanon in 1978. But after he split from the Tigers, he struck his own liaison with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PLFP), led by George Habash which, he claims, has been useful.

But while plot still lays great store by Palestinian guerrilla training, the Tigers say they are having second thoughts. Said Balasingham:

"The PLO-trained boys have not exactly proved to be an asset to our armed strength. Our terrain and conditions are different".

The Tigers now claims to have developed their own training infrastructure.

Besides the leftist organisations, which had traditionally been backed by the Soviet Union and Cuba, the Tamil rebels have also had some contact with the Irish Republican Army (IRA), even though they deny it. High level intelligence men, however, have evidence of the liaison and explain that the rebels' anxiety to deny it is because they do not want Scotland Yard on their campaigners' trail in the United Kingdom.

The guerrilla leaders also baulk at questions on direct help by foreign governments, particularly India. As Uma Maheswaran of PLOT evasively said:

"Our independence has to be achieved by our own people. We are not dependent on the others. They (India) are allowing us to operate from here, that is good enough."

The foreign factor is not just confined to leftist guerrilla organisations. A significant role is being played in the build-up by the widespread net of Eelam bodies run by expatriate Tamils the world over, particularly in the UK - where there are over 30,000 of them - the US, Australia, West Germany and Canada.

The guerrillas are benefiting from the misplaced policy of the Sri Lankan Government to systematically downgrade the Tamil population by denying them jobs under a blatantly racial Sinhala Only Act. The law drove thousands of Tamils abroad in search of education and work.

A bulk of them have taken asylum in West Germany and, though not very rich, form the hard core of the Eelam support overseas.

"We expatriates are always aware of the problems back home," said S. Srinivasan, who teaches political science at the Adelaide University in Australia. He adds: "Sometimes I used to think it is easy for us, far away, to be radical . But each time I come back, I find people here more determined to achieve what they want."

The expatriates' most visible contribution is to propaganda. The rebel literature is slick and produced in expensive foreign presses. PLOT has even managed to obtain from its expatriate supporters a small transmitter which it operates from a boat off the Indian coast, making four-hour broadcasts every Saturday and Sunday in English, Tamil and Sinhala on the 41 meter band and varying the frequency between 7,000 and 7,125 megahertz to hoodwink the Government jamming experts.

Often it is possible to monitor the broadcasts in parts of Tamil Nadu. It was this propaganda blitz organised basically by the expatriates that led President Jayewardene to say some time back that the

"Tamils must be the world's strongest minority".

But the expatriate help is not confined to propaganda. A bulk of the money for the rebels' arms shoppers is also raised by Eelam supporters abroad. This, along with the PLO support, has enabled them to weld a spearhead armed with Kalashnikovs - the favourite assault rifle of leftist guerrilla outfits the world over - and NATO issue G-3 rifles, whose origin is shrouded in mystery. In all likelihood, the latter were bought from mercenary arms dealers in Europe. Besides, the guerrillas have generous supplies of Sten machine-carbines, hand-guns and grenades.

But more important than the arithmetic of their current armed strength is the sense of commitment to the Eelam cause. Obviously, these are not merely paper tigers as is evident from their frequent armed strikes, one of which - by the Tigers in July 1983 - lit the spark for the ethnic riots. Besides, most of the leaders escaped in jail-breaks following the killings and have shown the inclination to fight on.

The Tigers ideologue, Parmanandan Nesan, claimed:

"We even carry cyanide pills to commit suicide when there is no escape. None of our people have ever been caught."

While that is still a claim that cannot be verified, the guerrilla outfits are full of people like TELO chief Sri Sabaratnam alias Tall Sri, who has a price of Rs 2 lakh on his head - he managed to escape while serving a life sentence for participation in a guerrilla raid.

His brother, Kandaswamy is still held hostage in a Sri Lanka prison. The plot publicity in-charge, Shirley Skantha, claims:

"Armed training is on now and we are very close to our target of 5,000 armed men. Taking over power is no problem now. But we think in terms of mass mobilisation and crippling the state."

But, for all the claims, the lack of action in the recent past arouses suspicions about their real capability. The rebels explain it away, saying that it is vital for them to buy time. Besides, they argue, they were worried about the possibility of reprisals against the Tamil refugees in camps near Colombo.

But a more likely explanation is that they are realistic enough to know that there will be no taking on the Government as long as they do not achieve a measure of unity among themselves. In the past, the groups have bitterly fought each other, even killed each other's men, provoking a senior Tamil Nadu police officer to remark:

"The problem is they have nothing in common except for a craving for fancy acronyms for their organisations and their leftist orientation."

But now the rebels themselves are desperate to reach some kind of unity and put an end to internecine blood-letting. Said Balasingham:

"Centralised military command is what we are looking for. It is a vital aim and will be achieved."

The PLOT chief Uma Maheswaran, who in June 1982 escaped an assassination attempt by the Tigers chief Prabhakaran in Madras, displays even more keenness for unity. He pleads:

"We must unite now. We are trying. For almost 18 months we were not even on talking terms. But now we have established contact with some representatives of the Tigers."

Unity in fact is one aim on which all rebel leaders agree. Asserted Tall Sri:

"We must not bother about ideology now. We must unite. It is a sine qua non."

But prospect for unity are obstructed by various predilections, personal as well as ideological. The Tigers are in no mood to forgive Uma Maheswaran for his alleged indiscretions while he was with them or for his breaking away.

In the past, they have also indulged in vendetta killings against members of other organisations and even now do not rule it out. Asserted a deadpan Parmanandan Nesan, a Tigers spokesman:

"Our task is not merely fighting the Sinhala army. Eliminating robbers and hardcore thieves is also our job."

A determined unity effort has been launched by some young TULF leaders, backed by expatriate Tamils and some local leaders, particularly from the DMK [Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam]. For them, the stumbling block will finally be the Tigers-plot enmity, evident in Balasingham's assertion that the Tigers "will have nothing to do with anything that embarrasses the Government of India, like running a clandestine transmitter from Indian soil". The reference is obviously to the PLOT venture.

In sheer military terms, if the rebel organisations achieve some degree of unity, the Sri Lanka Army will find them a tough proposition. Defence experts say that if the Sri Lankan rebels are able to muster 6,000-7,000 armed men against the Sri Lanka Army's strength of a meagre 11,000, only super power intervention could prevent them from taking Eelam.

Claimed Balasingham:

 "In any case, they will not have all their army spare to fight us. We can create conditions in the south (which has a Sinhala majority) to keep them tied down there."

Obviously, even the Sri Lankan Government is not underestimating the rebel threat. Nor is it in a mood to throw in the towel without fighting. Defence sources confirm that a batch of Sri Lankan officers were recently sent to Malaysia for training in counter insurgency and jungle warfare.

In the past, Sri Lankan officers have been trained in British academies. Of late, there has been evidence of the British Army's ultra-elite Special Air Service (SAS) commandos training the Sri Lankans. The Government is procuring more and faster gunboats from China to effectively patrol the Palk Straits.

Old, discarded armoured cars too are being sought from the Pakistani Army, which may not be of much use in the plains of Punjab but would present a daunting challenge in the Jaffna bush. Besides, the Government is rearming the troops with American M16 rifles, some of which are provided with Rocket Propelled Grenades (RPG's).

Interestingly, the desperate search for arms and training has sent both the guerrillas and the Sri Lanka Government shopping in the British mercenary markets, which have been regular suppliers to the African and Latin American guerrilla groups.

For the guerrillas, the quest led to the hiring, instead, of a sizeable number of retired Indian Army, Navy and BSF officers who have been training rebels. The Indian intelligence agencies have a list of such officers, some of whom have been half-heartedly warned to stay clear."

[Quelle: Shekhar Gupta (Hindi शेखर गुप्ता, 1957 - ): Sri Lanka rebels: Ominous presence in Tamil Nadu - Investigation News - Issue Date: Mar 31, 1984 (indiatoday.in). -- Fair use]

1984-12-24

1984 Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly election

1984 Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly election
 
← 1980 24 December 1984 1989 →

All 234 seats in the Legislature of Tamil Nadu
118 seats needed for a majority
Turnout 73.47%
     
Leader M. G. Ramachandran M. Karunanidhi
Party AIADMK DMK
Alliance INC+ Lok Dal (Janata Secular)
Leader's seat Andipatti did not contest
Seats won 195 34
Seat change 29 25
Popular vote 11,681,221 8,021,293
Percentage 53.87% 37.00%
Swing 4.95% 7.43%

Aus dem Election Manifesto des DMK = Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (Tamil திராவிட முன்னேற்றக் கழகம்)

"In order that Tamiḻttāy's [Tamil தமிழ்த்தாய் = Mutter Tamil] jeweled crown should shine,
We built the historic temple to
Valluvar whose fame reaches the very skies;
And the world-famous new town of
Poombukar with its Cilappatikaram museum, seven stories high!
And a fort in the memory of
Virapandiya Kattabomman at Panjalankurichi.
We enabled all these, not just one, not just two, but plenty! plenty!"

[Quelle: Sumathi Ramaswamy [சுமதி ராமஸ்வாமி]: Passions of tongue : Language devotion in Tamil India 1891 - 1970. -- Berkeley : Univ. of California Pr., 1997. -- S. 75. -- Fair use]

1987-08 - 1990-03

Indian Peace Keeping Force ist in Sri Lanka


Abb.: Briefmarke, 1990
[ GODL]

Indian Peace Keeping Force
 
Active July 1987 – March 1990
Country  Sri Lanka
Allegiance  India
Branch Indian Army
Indian Navy
Indian Air Force
Role Peacekeeping
Counterinsurgency
Special operations
Size 100,000 (peak)
Engagements Operation Pawan
Operation Viraat
Operation Trishul
Operation Checkmate
Decorations One Param Vir Chakra
Six Maha Vir Chakras
Commanders
Notable
commanders
Lieutenant General Depinder Singh
Major General Harkirat Singh (General Officer Commanding)
Lieutenant General S.C. Sardeshpande
Lieutenant General A.S. Kalkat

Cap.Shivkaran Alok Dubey(M.VrC) Gp.Capt. M.P Premi] VrC,

VM 
IAF
1990

Madras (Tamil மதராஸ்): Es erscheint;

தாய்மொழிப்பற்று - Tāymoḻippaṟṟu (Devotion to mother tongue). -- In: தமிழ்ப் பாடநூல் :  ஏழாம் வகுப்பு - Tamiḻp pāṭanūl:  Ēḻām vakuppu (Tamil textbook for grade seven) . -- Madras : Govenmrnt of Tamilnadu, 1990
"Devotion to Mother Tongue

“Motherland” and “mother tongue” are concepts that have a relationship to “mother.” Our mother tongue captures our inner sentiments and shows them to us. It is language that distinguishes humans from animals. The mother tongue is the language with which one speaks with the mother who rears and raises us from the time of birth. The mother is the first acquaintance of the child, and it is through her that the child recognizes others as well. Just as the child has great devotion towards its mother, similarly, all of us, too, must have devotion towards our mother tongue."

[Quelle: Sumathi Ramaswamy [சுமதி ராமஸ்வாமி]: Passions of tongue : Language devotion in Tamil India 1891 - 1970. -- Berkeley : Univ. of California Pr., 1997. -- S. 247. -- Fair use]

1990-03-07

Cholapuram (Tamil சோழபுரம்): Tod von Shuddhananda Bharati (Tamil சுத்தானந்த பாரதி - Cuttāṉanta pārati, 1897 - 1990)

Aus einem Gedicht über ein Tamil-Heimatland unter Herrschaft von Tamiḻttāy [Tamil தமிழ்த்தாய் = Mutter Tamil]:

"There is gold and greenery everywhere;
The smile of our illustrious queen who reigns over the cool Tamil grove, is like the glow of the morning light that destroys darkness ...[!]
Countless poets sing their songs!
The cuckoos fill the air with sweet Tamil music!
....
The land holds high its head; our own arts and sciences shoot up like mountains! . . .
The parched land is now a pleasant grove!
....
Holding her auspicious scepter, our mother reclines gloriously on her priceless throne of knowledges. . . .
And celestials pray for her long life thus, “Long live Tamil sweeter than nectar! . . .
May you grace us so that Tamil learning flourishes and the entire world flourishes with it!”
(Velayutam Pillai 1971: 80-81)

[Quelle: Sumathi Ramaswamy [சுமதி ராமஸ்வாமி]: Passions of tongue : Language devotion in Tamil India 1891 - 1970. -- Berkeley : Univ. of California Pr., 1997. -- S. 20. -- Fair use]

"In his reminiscences, the mystic-poet Suddhananda Bharati recalls how as a young man, his passions were directed as much against the emergent Dravidian movement as against the British, and how he and his young friends countered the cry of “Down with Brahman Rule” with the alternate cry of “Vante Mataram.” When we are enslaved to the British, what is the point of saying that we are slaves to Aryanism? he asks.

“Relinquishing our home to a foreigner, siblings fight with each other over food. Meanwhile, the foreigner seizes all our food and goes away, leaving us with our squabbles”

(Suddhananda Bharati 1950: 143-46)."

[Quelle: Sumathi Ramaswamy [சுமதி ராமஸ்வாமி]: Passions of tongue : Language devotion in Tamil India 1891 - 1970. -- Berkeley : Univ. of California Pr., 1997. -- S. 48. -- Fair use]

1991

Abb.: "R. Mathivanan [இரா. மதிவாணன் - Irā. Mativāṇaṉ, 1936 - ], மறைந்த லெமூரியக் கண்டம் -Maṟainta lemūriyak kaṇṭam   [Vanished Lemuria Continent].

This map, in Tamil, shows the reconstructed Indian peninsula to the north, with a landbridge connecting to the large landmass of Lemuria in the south, terminating in Antarctica. The shaded portions represent the oceans surrounding Lemuria. From Ramachandran and Mathivanan, The Spring of the Indus Civilization."

[Quelle: Sumathi Ramaswamy [சுமதி ராமஸ்வாமி]: The lost land of Lemuria : Fabulous geographies, catastrophic histories. -- Berkeley : Univ. of California Pr., 2004. -- 334 S. : Ill. -- S. 208. Einfärbung von mir. -- Fair use]

1993

Bangalore (Kannada ಬೆಂಗಳೂರು): Es erscheint

V. T. Rajshekar (Kannada ವೊತಿಬೆಟ್ಟು ತಿಮ್ಮಪ್ಪ ರಾಜಶೇಖರ್ ಶೆಟ್ಟಿ - Votibeṭṭu Tim'mappa Rājaśēkhar Śeṭṭi, 1932 - ): Dialogue of the Bhoodevatas : Sacred Brahmins versus Socialist Brahmins. -- Bangalore : Dalit Sahitya Academy,1993. -- 92 S.

Inhalt:

"Introduction

The fair-skinned foreigners, the Aryan barbarians, who strayed into India came into clash with India's dark-skinned indigenous population -the Untouchables. Today, the same Untouchables are officially called Scheduled Castes (20%), Scheduled Tribes (10%) and Backward Castes (35%) - (SC/ST/BCs) - in all forming over 65% of India's 1,000 million population. The alien intruders clashed with the indigenous people, the inheritors of the great glorious Indus Valley Civilisation, and gradually clamped their brahminical social order (BSO) to enslave the natives. But the natives were soon saved by their saviour, Gautama Buddha, whose egalitarian religion of Buddhism they all embraced en masse to save themselves from Aryan aggression. To defeat the Buddha and Buddhism, the Aryans/Hindu castes - the world's original racists - used violence and several cunning strategies and tactics. (Dalit Voice editorial Feb. 1 1992: "Brahminism defeats us through strategies and tactics").

The Aryan Brahmins giving up their most favourite food, beef, which was then exclusively reserved for them, and becoming vegetarians was one such supreme strategy to defeat Buddhism. Adi Shankara, a Namboodari Brahmin from Kerala, re-established the supremacy of brahminism mainly using violence to kill and destroy the liberating religion of Buddhism which by then had spread over the whole of India and Asia. Since then the BSO has been using different strategies and tactics to keep itself as the ruling class though the brahminical forces as such never directly ruled the country as a whole. India was ruled by Buddhists for 1,000 years, Muslims for 800 years and Christians (British) for another 250 years. Though the BSO did defeat Buddhism, BSO could not rule India. Not only the BSO could not rule but throughout the rule of Buddhists, Muslims and Christians, the brahminical forces suffered and suffered and yet survived like a cockroach.

The chance to rule India at last came in 1947 when the Aryans/Hindus/upper castes managed to oust a section of Muslims into a separate country (Pakistan) to establish their brahminical hegemony. But even then the BSO could not succeed because Babasaheb Ambedkar, who came as the saviour of Buddhism and the enslaved children of the soil - SC/ST/BCs - brought in democracy incorporating it in the Constitution of India, thereby ensuring that the BSO comprising less than 15% of the Indian population remained as a mere minority. At this crucial juncture, the only thing that provided a lifesaving drug to brahminism/sanatanism/aryanism/Vaidik Dharma was socialism/communism/marxism which the BSO devoured and digested. Jawaharlal Nehru was the king of this fake socialists/ communists/marxists.

The weak but cunning brahminical forces quickly devised new strategies and tactics - and got themselves divided into two neat camps, They struck upon a marvelous plan to hoodwink the masses. They created two neat camps and very effectively fooled the masses (Dalit Voice Feb. 16 1992: "Why DV did not criticise Nazi Ekta Yatra?"). The two camps are: (1) Those opposing socialism/marxism and (2) those supporting it. What follows is a dialogue between these two camps discribed as "sacred brahmins "and" socialist brahmins".

When we refer to the name "brahmins" in the two camps, we don’t mean the Brahmins belonging to the first of the four-fold varna system. By sacred brahmins or socialist brahmins we don't mean the born-Brahmins though some of them may form part of it. For example Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, the "Father of the Nation", is not a Brahmin but a born Vaishya (Bania) forming the third layer of the BSO. Still we put him under the socialist brahmins. The person who killed M.K. Gandhi, a Chitpavan Brahmin, comes under the sacred brahmins. The late Sarvodaya leader, Jayaprakash Narayan (JP), a Kayasth and a shudra, comes under the socialist brahmins. So too the West Bengal marxist shudra chief Minister, Jyoti Basu.

So, it is clear that the two terms - "socialist brahmins" and "sacred brahmins" - do not refer exclusively to born Brahmins. The two terms essentially refer to the policies and practices pursued by the BSO which has artificially though not consciously divided itself into two camps to deceive and dupe the non-Hindu, non-Aryan original inhabitants of India forming over 85% of its population.

Of the two, we like the sacred brahmins who as our open enemy are a harmless lot. The sacred brahmins or the orthodox vaidiks do not interfere with our lives. The sacred brahmins confine themselves to their pujas, temple rituals, study of their sacred scriptures and keep a strict distance from the non-Hindus. Since they are part of the BSO, they don't mix with those outside the BSO. Whole of their day is governed by the brahminical rule of purity and pollution and hence they keep themselves away from us. They neither love the non-Hindus nor hate them. They live in their own little world. And that is why we like them.

We would have been happy if the entire BSO comprising less than 15% of the population had emulated the sacred brahmins. But the more cunning and crafty members of the BSO like M.K. Gandhi conspired that Untouchables should be admitted into their Hindu temples which have nothing to do with Untouchables as our people are not Hindus and never Hindus, and created all the confusion and tension.

On one side Gandhi and the slimy socialist brahmins, annoyed the honest sacred brahmins and on the other they interfered with the exclusive life of the Untouchables by trying to "hinduise" our people. The unquestioned leader of Untouchables, Babasaheb Ambedkar, called this a gandhian bid to enslave us. So, Gandhi was hated by non-Hindus on one side and sacred brahmins like B.G. Tilak, Savarkar, Moonje etc. who finally eliminated the Mahatma. (Why Godse Killed Gandhi? 1986, DSA).

We are giving just one example of the confusion and chaos created in the country by the socialist brahmins.

The theory of sacred brahmins vs. the socialist brahmins was first propounded in our book, Why Godse Killed Gandhi? Since the theory became so popular and convincing, we thought a full-fledged book is needed to go into the details of the havoc caused by the socialist brahmins in their mock fight against sacred brahmins. Hence this book.

A word of caution. Readers should note that the whole thing is written in a lighter vein so that even the right-thinking, humour-loving Aryans and even non-Aryans who are referred to in harsh terms should enjoy it. And laugh at themselves. And correct themselves if they want to. A country cannot be governed by mere strategies and tactics. Gimmicks. When everybody comes to know these strategies and tactics, they will no more work. This is the warning.

The book runs in the form of a dialogue between the sacred and the socialist brahmins.

V.T. RAJSHEKAR

Bangalore, India

Date: June 1 1993."

[a.a.O., S. 1 - 4. -- Fair use]

"The bhoodevatas had thought that the "British imperialism" would be replaced by "brahminical imperialism". But Dr.B.R.Ambedkar brought a Constitution which served as a direct onslaught on their very value system. Sacred brahmins saw ’darkness everywhere. They shuddered at their impending doom. How soon the world is coming to an end! What a tragedy!

Beef-eating Brahmans

All the finer aspects of life were crumbling before their very eyes. The holy Hindu India, well known for its satya, dharma, nyaya turned into a land of pishachis. Sacred scriptures no more commanded that awe-inspiring respect. Holy men no more attracted that single-minded devotion and reverence. Holy places were no more attractive. Brahmins started forgetting Sanskrit. Westernised Brahmins started eating beef.

Brahmin priests manning these holy places started selling the very temple idols - their own gods and goddesses, once the cynosure of all eyes - to the antique dealer for export. Corruption started killing the holy Brahmin.

Temple entry: Bhoodevatas had brought Gandhi but he soon started playing the mischief. Untouchables got emboldened to enter the Brahmin holy precincts and pollute the atmosphere. It was sickening. Sanskrit, the language of Gods, came to be recited on the roadside.

In some places, even the monoploy of hereditary priesthood exclusively reserved for Brahmins was broken and stupid shudras started manning the temples as archakas. Can there be a greater fall my countrymen?

Modem, westernised education led to "rational thinking" and this "rationalism" led to science. And science killed the myth and myth-makers who had assiduously manufactured the Ramayana and Mahabharat, epics to inject fear into the hearts of the lowly. The once strong, impregnable fortress started crumbling and there was confusion all-round. What a fall?

Tight-pant girls: The honest or the sacred brahmins "thought" it is better to commit suicide than seeing before their own cursed eyes their very sons throwing off the "sacred thread", taking to beef, fish, chicken, meat and pork and coming home drunk. Nay. They have started marrying shudra girls . and sometimes foreigners, and settling in the unholy Christian (West) lands refusing to come back to this sacred land. Brahmin women once confined to home and sweet home, in the kitchen, started wearing jeans. They ride motor cycles and sit with all sorts of dirty shudras and even Muslims. They started working as clerks, stenos and secretaries to Muslims and shudra bosses. Ram, Ram, Ram. Shantam-papam, shantam-papam.

Brahmin houses were literally on fire. People started questioning the holy Brahmin. They started making fun of the revered, time-honoured customs, manners and traditions. The Brahmin became the object of ridicule.

Thread - cutting: The godless Dravida Kazhagam people in Tamil Nadu, a lump of idiotic shudras headed by E.V.Ramaswami Naicker (called Periyar by his people) started cutting the Brahmin "sacred thread" and even his tuft. And this was praised in the press and public. The Brahmins had no courage to protest against such a sacrilege. The deafening cries for abolition of caste system started becoming louder and louder. It has become a fashion to berate the Brahmin, and everything he represented. And some Brahmins themselves started resorting to this Brahmin-baiting to get cheap popularity.

Untouchable bosses: Constitutional (job) reservations opened the floodgates of opportunities to the undeserving Untouchables devoid of merit and efficiency and quite a number of these with impure blood came as LAS, IPS officers to boss over the bhoodevatas."

[a.a.O., S. 9ff. -- Fair use]

"Gains from temple entry

See, who is going today to Sabarimalai (Kerala), Tirupati and all such holy places. It is these shudras and Dalits. They are making a beeline and putting all their money into our temple coffers on which we alone have the control. By throwing open our temples to Untouchables, shudras, our income has gone up.
Are you now convinced that temple-entry to the wretched and the idiots has brought us more profits than keeping it shut?
Please note, all key posts shall continue to remain with us only. All our privileges, positions and properties shall continue to be with us only. We will give these idiots only third and fourthgrade positions. And those trying to challenge us after coming inside shall be mercilessly crushed in the name of "merit and efficiency".
Washing Brahmin feet: Remember, while selecting the shudras even to this third and fourthgrade positions we select only the meekest, most ignorant, most docile, most obedient and one who is a real monkey-brand. Coupled with these weaknesses, if he is also corrupt and unscrupulous such a shudra or Dalit must be given preference. Such a shudra should be instantly selected."

[a.a.O., S. 27]

"Dange’s marxist mantra: We have nothing to lose. Bhoodevatas like our Danges, Namboodiripads chanted marxist mantras to fool the people - the shudras, Untouchables, Muslims and all others. It is only by chanting the mantra of democracy, socialism and secularism, we will be able to fool the idiots and capture all the levers of powers. Then only the leadership will be with us. Let us swear by socialism and take control of all trade unions. Let us talk of nationalisation and appoint all the “sacred threads" to top positions in all public sector industries.

Nehru affairs with Edwina

Secular Muslims: Secularism is the best weapon to curb the Muslims. We have to encourage "secular Muslims". We have to select good stooges among Muslims and describe them as "secular Muslims". These "secular Muslims" are our greatest asset.

Socialism means nationalisation of industries. Nationalisation means no need to work. So, occupying key positions our "sacred threads" will get fat salaries without doing any work. Even as we are "working" and drawing fat salaries doing no work in nationalised industries, we can set up our own private companies in the name of our wives, sons and thus multiply our source of income.

See how we are managing all nationalised banks, LIC, public sector undertakings. Socialism is a boon to the bhoodevatas. See how we made a Harshad Mehta defrauding Rs. 6,000 crores.

Nehru’s Scotch Whisky: It was Jawaharlal Nehru's brainwave to promote the bhoodevatas through nationalisation. Nehru served the bhoodevatas better than all you sacred brahmins put together. Did not Nehru daily drink Scotch, flirt with Edwina and many other women, appoint all threaded people to key positions, travel all over the world many times and convince the whole world that he was the world’s best statesman even while building up the bhoodevata empire? Did your Guru Golwalkar do this much of service? Did your Balasaheb Deoras do it? Nehru led a life of supreme pleasure, wining and dining and womanising too, which is what every bhoodevata is expected to do. Nehru did all this and ruled India for over a decade and yet remained the darling of the idiots and the wretched. He bequeathed the empire to his daughter who bettered him and she in turn handed over the hereditary post to Rajiv Gandhi who too served us well. But for the Chinese invasion, Nehru would have ruled for some more time. The Nehru Era brought the greatest good to the bhoodevatas. It was he who taught us how to remain idle and yet make maja and lead a life of eternal pleasure and endless leisure in the name of socialism.

We enjoyed socialism for 45 years and after fully using it we deserted it when socialism died. Now, our sacred neogi brahmin has taken over as the Prime Minister, and he switched on to capitalism. Only brand names change but our rule will continue.

Don’t speak truth: If we tell the truth that brahminism is opposed to democracy, socialism and secularism, who will accept us? We will be called enemies by the shudras and Dalits. Because it has become the fashion of the day to shout in the name of democracy, socialism and secularism.

What do we lose if we also shout the same slogans and continue at the same time our traditional business of exploitation? If these three new slogans can help us retain our sacred supremacy on the society, why not take to it as the fish takes to water? See, who is heading the Communist Party Marxist? Our sacred man. So also CPI, all parties. Marxism has come to save brahminism."

[a.a.O., S. 37ff. -- Fair use]

"The hated English language

Sacred brahmins: If you teach all these bad habits even to our boys, then who will be left to do yagas, yajnas, our sacred duties, temple worship?

Socialist Brahmins: To hell with your temples. As things change, we must also change. You have been shouting and shouting about Sanskrit saying that our sacred language, the language of the gods, is dying. Do you know what we did? We held six national conferences on Sanskrit and the entire deliberations were conducted in English language. Today, we shout for Sanskrit in English. The total number of Sanskrit-knowing people in India is not even 5,000. And in spite of this are you not having a Sanskrit radio news bulletin?

We have to change according to the changing times.

How we took to English but impressed tne shudras and anti-shudras not to learn English. We told them that English is the language of the foreigners, our rulers, imperialists, and those opting for English will become anti-national. The idiots believed our propaganda and kept away from English.

At the same time, we created a strong love for "mother tongue" in the hearts of all idiots. So, all the vernacular languages are loved and preserved by the shudras and ati-shudras while we took to English. Our boys and girls became IAS officers, scientists, lawyers, management experts, computer kids, Harshad Mehtas through English language and the boys of the shudras remained as clerks by sticking to their mother tongue. How do you like our trick? Had we followed you, our boys would have dropped dead by holding on to the dead language - Sanskrit.

Cricket - the idlers paradise

Today, we ask the shudra idiots and the wretched Harijans to study the useless Sanskrit language whereas our children have mastered German, French, Japanese and have become captains of industry.

Sacred brahmins: Yes, yes. We admire your capacity to fool the idiots and keep them at bay. But our worry is that our children are becoming too much entertainment-oriented because of cricket, cinema, TV etc and forgetting their studies.

Socialist brahmins: As bhoodevatas and unquestioned lords of the land, we are not expected to work. We have to spend our time drinking, eating, mating and then sleeping. This is what our gods did and our ancestors followed. Our life should be a life of unending pleasure and eternal entertainment. We have any number of servants to do our work.

Cricket is the world’s best suited game for the

bhoodevatas. Our idli-sambar grass-eating boys cannot compete in the Olympics and win any prize. See what we did in the 1992 Barcelona Olympics. That is why we have taken to cricket. Cricket suits us eminently - because it is neither a male nor a female. It is a eunuch. It is neither a game nor a sport. It is neither played in the Olympics nor in the Asiad. No busy modem country plays it. We the bhoodevatas are essentially lazy people. Look at the number of holiday we have in a year. Out of the 365 days in a year, we have 300 days of holidays. We go to office only on 65 days and having gone to office, we need not work. The bhoodevatas are born to enjoy - enjoy at others’ cost.

Why we don't work? Because the shudras and ati-shudras do the work for us. They produce the food and we eat and rule. We have given them a philosophy (dharma) which they have accepted and they are obediently doing their work. We inflict no violence on them. Instead of violence, we have contrived an ideology of brahminism which is more violent than physical violence. This makes the slaves enjoy their slavery. (Dalit Voice editorial Sept.l 1992: "India is the only country where slaves enjoy their slavery". When the slaves enjoy their slavery, where is the need for violence?"

[a.a.O., S. 58ff. -- Fair use]

Farce of rural development

Sacred brahmins: Our vedas and shastras have prohibited us from touching the soil and working on land. Look at the Bhumihar Brahmin farmers of Bihar. They have been downgraded. They are not considered Brahmins at all. Our scriptures say that not only we should have nothing to do with land but all those wretched fellows working on land must be kept as slaves. That is why we should neglect rural development. If rural development is taken up seriously that will make the shudra and backward caste farmers prosperous.

Socialist brahmins: Don’t say this in public. If we neglect the rural side and starve the farmers what will you eat? You only say that our scriptures prohibit us from working on land. When we don’t grow our own food, and if we starve the shudra farmers, then from where can we get our food? Don’t you know that our sacred threads are gluttonous eaters? Brahmanam bhojana priya.

Beware of farmers: We are fond of eating. In fact, we are bom to eat. We live to eat, not eat to live. That means we need plenty of food. That means we must get adequate supply of rice, wheat, vegetable, milk, fruits, fish, meat, eggs, honey, nuts. The idiotic shudra farmers will grow it and give it to us. As the sacred threads are city-dwellers, if we are harsh with the farmers they can simply starve us to death. Remember, fellows like Prof. M.D. Nanjundaswamy Mehendra Singh Tikayat can simply kill us.

You see what happened in Madras few years back Those idiotic Vanniyars blocked the supply of milk to Madras city and our poor papans started screaming. Our people can live without anything but not milk. Milk is our most important food.

Remember, if the farmers unite they can simply starve us to death. Already, dreaded terrorists like the Editor of Dalit Voice have been going round the country and telling farmers leaders like Tikayat, M.D. Nanjundaswamy etc. that a farmer must grow food only to the extent of his household needs and in the rest of the land, he must grow cash crops. If his advice is seriously taken and implemented then what will happen to our big belly? Eating is our pleasantest pastime. We sacred threads are bom to eat. Brahmanam bhojana priya. So if we heed your advice, we will be finished.

Sacred brahmins: Your policy of rural development is not only wrong but dangerous. When our cities are starved of funds, why divert the scarce resource to rural development?

Meeting and eating

Socialist brahmins : When we speak of "rural development" what we actually mean is just lip sympathy. It is just a slogan like all our other slogans. The funny thing is the idiots believe the slogans and vote for us. In the name of "rural development", we can start hundreds of agricultural universities and appoint sacred thread vice-chancellors and professors. Hundreds of our boys and girls will get jobs in the name of rural development. Sacred thread agricultural scientists like the Dr. M.S. Swaminathans can hold international seminars along with eating and meeting, wining and dining in five-star hotels. Wide publicity is given to these seminars in our national press. And to these international seminars we invite some select idiotic shudra farmers and further corrupt them. Out of this, we can select one "gentleman farmer" and give him a "national award". Life-long he will be grateful to us.

By giving such publicity we will see that these shudra  farmers produce more and supply more for us to eat, sitting in cities.

You know the children of these shudras and backward castes have started leaving their farms and fields and migrating to cities. That means these shudra kids will start competing with our boys and girls. So, to check the migration of these shudras and BC/SCs to cities, periodical "rural development" stunts are necessary to fool these idiots.

"Rural development", "Jai Kisan - Jai Jawan", "Farmers are our backbone", these are all mere slogans to fool these idiots. How successfully we have mesmerised the whole country by mere slogans. We have starved them to death. No food, no clothing, no shelter, no education, yet the masses are so happy, so contented believing merely in our slogans, can you think of better cheats than us in the whole world? The Editor of Dalit Voice calls it slaves enjoying their slavery.

Our sacred thread boys in the banks can have some socialist exercises of opening "rural branches" and pretend giving loans to farmers. We have told our boys to give some loans and see that the farmers become defaulters and then attach their property and caution them and see that the farmers become paupers and some commit suicide.

Indirectly, we are doing only what you want us to do. But we use sugar-coated words. You go on speaking your language, we go on speaking our language.

Literacy drive

Sacred brahmins: Our goddess Saraswati has said that she can bless only the sacred threads. Saraswati cannot smile on anybody other than the sacreds. But your policy is ruining us. You want to make all the wretched fellows literate. This will spell danger to us. Saraswati will frown upon us.

Socialist brahmins: Don’t be foolish. You forget that the Constitution of India has provided for "free, compulsory and universal primary education". Constitutional obligation has to be fulfilled.

For this we have set up scores of govt, agencies to "implement" the constitutional provision and this has given jobs to hundreds of our boys and girls. They go to villages in the name of "adult literacy scheme", Saksharata Yagna and hundreds of other schemes. All the teachers and the staff are mostly from our sacred society. See the number of jobs this literacy drive has created to our threaded teachers. These teachers hardly attend classes and when they attend classes they will enforce varnashram dharma within the school and brainwash the children about Manu dharma and Artha shastra. Look at the profit. In the name of universal education, millions of our sacreds got jobs. At govt. expense we can preach and practice brahminism and these teachers will have such vast influence in villages where they will be virtual dictators.

And more than that, these threaded teachers have been charged with the task of keeping the masses illiterate. They are doing a fine job. Real literacy is not even 15% even after 46 years of independance.

Monopoly of English

See what we have done. The Constitution came into being in 1950- 51. It is now over 41 years and we have seen to it that the literacy remains at 30%.

And do you know how we have arrived at this (30%) figure? We have included the signaturewalas also. Even those who can just put the signature are called literate. So including the signaturewalas, it has come to 30%. If you deduct the signaturewalas, the literacy is not even 10%. And those knowing English are not even 2% and mostly they are our people. We have seen that English remains our monopoly. All this we can achieve by making a song and dance of "literacy drive”.

Are you satisfied now?

The meaning of Ahimsa

If the wretched and the idiots make a noise that constitutional provisions on primary education are not implemented, then we too will join that agitation and take over the leadership of the agitation. Then we appoint an inquiry commission with our sacred man as chairman who will take several years to submit the report. So more the idiots cry, more profit we can make.

Sacred brahmins: Ever since you took over as the rulers of India, you started reckless spending on arms, defence build-up and even tested and made an atom bomb. But all this goes against our policy of ahimsa (non-violence). Bhoodevatas are humble, weak, peace-loving, grass-eating people. We have always been talking of peace. But you have ruined our reputation.

Socialist brahmins: You are wrong. Our religion nowhere speaks of non-violence or peace. All our gods are fully armed with deadliest of weapons. Go to any temple and see our gods’ idols. Are they not carrying bows, arrows, gadha, chakra? Krishna, our main Black (Yadava) god whom we manufactured to fool the cowbelt Yadavas, constituting the single largest population in the Aryavarta (cow-belt), advised and directed Arjuna to kill his near and dear ones in the battlefield. Read the Gita Rahasya by Lokamanya Tilak, the king of sacred brahmins.

Tilak said non-violence was never a part of our holy religion. Non-violence was borrowed by our vaidik ancestors from Jainism and Buddhism to destroy these dirty religions which threatened to destroy our sanatana dharma.

We really pity your ignorance.

However, you are right in saying that the vaidiks are meek, weak, cowards. All cunning, crafty, crooked people are like this.

Our ancestors realised the danger of our physical weakness and our cowardly nature. They were afraid that our tormentors would trouble us. They were sure that the sturdy shudras and the wretched would physically annihilate us.

So to avert this danger, they deliberately introduced the non- violence theory. That does not mean the vaidiks have to be non-violent. We must preach, proclaim, propagate and publicise ahimsa (non-violence) to others -those sturdy Idiots and the wretched. They should be brainwashed that Hindus stand for non- violence and hence we should carry no arms. The moment you convince them of this theory, you can easily disarm them. Otherwise, these shudras and ati-shudras - all of them martial races - will take to arms and the first to be crushed will be we the vaidiks."

[a.a.O., S. 68 - 73. -- Fair use]

"Satyameva Jayate

Sacred brahmins: Honestly, we are not able to understand your reasoning. Yours is a fantastic argument. When we swear by Satyameva Jayate. how can we speak falsehood?

Socialist brahmins: You fellows have become such nuts that you cannot understand even simple things.

The moment a person steals something from others, he feels guilty. His conscience starts pricking him. To get relief, he will run to our temple and he is prepared to pay any price to get himself relieved. At that time you sacred brahmins, astrologers, soothsayers, palmists, pundits, godmen like you can flock him, surround him and squeeze him. He will pay you any amount of money.

Temples as business centres: That is why we say we must encourage corruption. More corrupt the society becomes, greater will be your income. How many roadside temples have sprung up in recent years? They are all doing roaring business. One new temple means job for dozen vaidiks.

The Ayyappa Temple at Sabarimalai, Tirupati, Kashi, Puri Jagannath, Madurai Meenakshi are our exclusive business centres for our exclusive enjoyment. If corruption ceases these temples will get no business. Who are going to these temples? Not we. It is the idiots and the wretched. They go and dump all their wealth into the temple coffers. And we become rich. Temples are a big business centre for us.

Another advantage of corruption is that one who is capable of extracting only Rs.200 - bribe a day will be

jealous of the person who is capable of collecting Rs. 500 a day. This jealousy leads to a fight between the two corrupt fellows. We must encourage such fights more and more. When two idiots quarrel, we vaidiks should take sides and also fight on their behalf so that the fight results in the annihilation of both the NB idiots. That will reinforce our leadership and we get ourselves better entrenched. That means as corruption increases, our income also increases and our leadership will get better entrenched. Not only that, we can strike better terror in their hearts."

[a.a.O., S. 87f. -- Fair use]

1995

Madras (Tamil மதராஸ்): Es erscheint:

R. Mativanan (Tamil இரா. மதிவாணன் - Irā. Mativāṇaṉ, 1936 - ): Indus script among Dravidian speakers. -- Madras : International Society for the Investigation of Ancient Civilizations, 1995. - 109 S. : Ill.


Abb.: R: Mativanan, 2014
[Bildquelle: செயப்பிரகாசம்/Wikimedia. -- CC BY-SA 3.0]

"4.1 To understand Mathivanan's decipherment of the Indus script, it is necessary to refer briefly to two major influences which have shaped his ideas on the antiquity of the Tamil
culture and language. His mentor, the late
Devaneya Pavanar, a renowned Tamil scholar, taught that Tamil is the most natural (iyal-mozhi ) and oldest (tol-mozhi) language from which all other languages of the world are derived. He was a staunch protagonist of the Pure Tamil movement and conceived the Etymological Dictionary Project for restoring Tamil to its original status of pristine purity. Acknowledging his indebtedness to Pavanar, Mathivanan writes:

Tamil is a language whose script and grammar were standardised millennia ago. My mentor, the eminent etymologist G. Devaneya Pavanar, advised me to attempt the decipherment of the Indus script applying the rules of the ancient Tamil grammar Tolkappiyam. My decipherment work, informed by his methodology, produced desired results.

4.2 The second influence permeating Mathivanan's work is the equally extreme view on the great antiquity of the Tamil civilisation propagated by the adherents of what may be called the ‘Lemuria-Kumari Kandam’ school of thought. Lemuria, like Atlantis of Western mythology, is the name given to a large land mass said to have been submerged under the sea in geological times. Kumari Kandam [குமரிக்கண்டம] is believed to be a large tract of land south of Cape Comorin submerged under the sea, according to the legendary tradition referred to in Old Tamil works. In a modem re-interpretation, Lemuria and Kumari Kandam are linked together as the most ancient homeland of the Tamil civilisation."

[Quelle: Iravatham Magadevan: Aryan or Dravidian neither? : A study on recent attempts to deciher the Indus script (1995 - 2000). -- In: Electronic journal of Vedic studies. -- 8-1 (2002). -- S. 11f. -- Online: Aryan or Dravidian or Neither? A Study of Recent Attempts to Decipher the Indus Script (1995-2000) | Electronic Journal of Vedic Studies (uni-heidelberg.de). -- Fair use]

1995-06-11

Tod von Perunchithiranar (Tamil பாவலரேறு பெருஞ்சித்திரனார் - Pāvalarēṟu Peruñcittiraṉār, 1933 - 1995)

Perunchithiranar
Born Rajamanickam


March 10, 1933
 

Samuthiram, Salem districtBritish India
Died June 11, 1995 (aged 62)
 

Tamil NaduIndia

Other names Durai Manickam
Pavalareru Perunchithiranar
Occupation Writer, Poet, Thani Tamil activist.



Abb.: Perunchithiranar
[Bildquelle: தகவலுழவன்/Wikimedia. -- CC BY-SA 3.0]

"So Perunchitran demanded as late as 1975:

“Are the troubles of your own mother more important than the terrible suffering of our glorious Tamiḻttāy [தமிழ்த்தாய் = Mutter Tamil]?
 ....
 Are the words of your own mother sweeter than our Tamil language, which is like ambrosia?”

 (Perunchitranar 1979: 109).

[Quelle: Sumathi Ramaswamy [சுமதி ராமஸ்வாமி]: Passions of tongue : Language devotion in Tamil India 1891 - 1970. -- Berkeley : Univ. of California Pr., 1997. -- S. 72f. -- Fair use]

1995-10-03

Chennai (Tamil சென்னை): Tod von M. P. Sivagnanam (Tamil ம. பொ. சிவஞானம் - Ma. Po. Civañāṉam, 1906 - 1995)


Abb.: Briefmarke, 2006
[Wikimedia / GODL]

"Another devotee who presents himself, albeit less colorfully than does Karunanidhi, as a maravar [மறவர்] battling for Tamil is M. P. Sivagnanam. Sivagnanam’s life, like Karunanidhi’s, offers an illustration of how tamiḻppaṟṟu  [தமிழ்ப்பற்று - devotion to Tamil] can bring fame and fortune, the trials and tribulations involved in its practice notwithstanding. Born in 1906 into a very poor family of the low Gramani [கிராமணி] caste in Madras city, Sivagnanam had to drop out of school early, and he helped support his family through a variety of minor jobs: rolling tobacco for country cigarettes, working as a day laborer on construction sites, and as a printer for about eight years. In 1927, he joined the Congress and rose slowly but steadily in its ranks, in spite of his low-caste, working-class background. In 1942, he was imprisoned in Amaravati for his participation in the Quit-India protests. This was a turning point in his life, for there he read Cankam poetry for the first time and came to believe that the Tamil country ought to be ruled only by Tamilians; that every Tamilian’s credo ought to be,

“Tamil everywhere, everything in Tamil”;

that Tamil should be the first principle of their lives; and that the Tamil land should be restored to its original, “sacred,” and “natural” frontiers (Sivagnanam 1974: 250-53).

Over the next two decades, he “battled” to make this vision a reality. In his autobiography suggestively entitled Enatu Porattam [எனது போராட்டம்] (My struggle), Sivagnanam writes that he had to conduct this battle on several fronts. As a Tamil devotee in the regional Congress, he struggled to ensure that Tamil interests were not compromised by that “nationalist” party. By 1953, he found that his continuing membership in the party threatened his devotion to Tamil. He writes that if he had not severed his connections with the Congress, he could have become mayor of Madras, or even a cabinet minister—no small achievement for a poor boy from the slums. But “for the sake of Tamil and Tamilnadu and Tamilians,” he gave all this up (Sivagnanam 1974: 709). On another front, as a “nationalist,” he also conducted a series of campaigns against the Dravidian movement in the 1950s to counter any possibility of Tamilnadu seceding from India (Sivagnanam 1974: 535-55).

His fame in Tamil devotional circles rests on his attempts to popularize the poems of the Cankam; on his efforts to commemorate the birthdays of great Tamil poets and nationalists like Bharati; and on a series of assaults he led from the late 1940s through the 1950s to ensure that the borders of the newly formed linguistic state of Madras conformed to what was imagined as Tamilakam [தமிழகம்], “the home of Tamil,” in the Cankam age, stretching from the Tirupati hills in the north to the Cape in the south. He also fought to ensure that the city of Madras would not be lost to neighboring Andhra Pradesh, declaring in 1953,

 “We will save our capital if it means cutting off our heads. As long as the last Tamilian is alive, we will not surrender our rights. We will not forget our heroic heritage. Fiercely, we will rise! We will protect our Tamiḻttāy [தமிழ்த்தாய் = Mutter Tamil]” (Sivagnanam 1974: 617).

And fiercely he did rise and march, and he was detained in 1953 and in 1956 by the Congress government for his role in these border campaigns. Although by the mid-1960s Sivagnanam joined ranks with the DMK [Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam] party in order to fight the common battle against Hindi and was subsequently elected to the Madras Legislative Assembly, he turned down an offer to join the DMK cabinet in 1967, wishing not to be diverted from his true service to Tamil, its land, and its people (Sivagnanam 1974: 981)."

[Quelle: Sumathi Ramaswamy [சுமதி ராமஸ்வாமி]: Passions of tongue : Language devotion in Tamil India 1891 - 1970. -- Berkeley : Univ. of California Pr., 1997. -- S. 227f. -- Fair use]

"Similarly, M. P. Sivagnanam (1906-1995), who hailed from an indigent working-class family and could afford only a primary school education, studied these poems on his own when he was in a colonial prison in the early 1940s. He writes of his experience on reading one of the anthologies of the Cankam corpus, the Purananuru [புறநானூறு]:

I gained consciousness of belonging to a community called Tamilian when I first read the Purananuru. Before that, I knew I was a Tamilian. But it was only on reading the Purananuru that I realized that the Tamil-speaking people had their own unique history, their own unique customs, their own distinctive political traditions, and their own nationality. Tamilians have had their own unique motherland (tayakam [தாயகம்]) and its name is Tamilnadu, I realized. Tamilnadu had been ruled for thousands of years by Tamilians. It struck me that no empire from the North had ever subjugated Tamilnadu or Tamilians during the Cankam period [சங்ககாலம்]. When I learned that men and women lived as equals in those days, my heart rejoiced. I forgot myself when I read the poems about the heroism of the mothers who sent off their young, innocent sons to the battlefield thronging with spears. I thanked God with all my heart for the good fortune of being born in such a Tamil land.

(Sivagnanam 1974: 250)"

[Quelle: Sumathi Ramaswamy [சுமதி ராமஸ்வாமி]: Passions of tongue : Language devotion in Tamil India 1891 - 1970. -- Berkeley : Univ. of California Pr., 1997. -- S. 35. -- Fair use]

1996

Chennai (Tamil சென்னை): Es erscheint:

B. S. Chandrababu (Tamil ப.சு. சந்திரபாபு - Pa.Cu. Cantirapāpu): The land and people of Tamilnadu : an ethnographical study. -- Madras : Emerald, 1996. -- 50 S. : Ill

"Another example of cartographic appropriation for the cause of Tamil labors of loss is a recent map that appears in an obscure introductory book on Tamil culture and history called The Land and People of Tamilnadu: An Ethnographic Study, by B. S. Chandrababu (1996), The by-now mandatory, albeit routinized, nod toward Lemuria is accompanied by a map (in English) showing the familiar outline of the Indian peninsula bounded on the north by an unnamed sea, further north of which are the edges of two land formations named “Europe-Syria” and “Siberian Asia.” India, parts of the Arabian peninsula, and the east coast of Africa however, are joined in a giant territorial formation that is boldly labeled “Kumari [குமாரி] Continent.” The map is not drawn to scale and does not use the grid of latitudes and longitudes, so it is difficult to measure the extent of the continent or to pin down its exact location, but Kumari occupies the entirety of the map. What makes this map interesting for the purposes of my argument is that it is a rough reproduction of an original that was first published to illustrate the exciting underwater revelations of the Anglo-Egyptian John Murray Expedition to the Indian Ocean, which mapped some 22,000 miles of the ocean floor (1933-34). The original map, however, identified the land that Chandrababu’s map names “Kumari Continent” as “Gondwanaland,” and it is clear that its author (Professor J. Stanley Gardiner) saw this as a Jurassic landmass teeming with dinosaurs and other prehistoric fauna, a far cry from the heroic Tamil ancestors of Chandrababu’s fabulous imagination. The London-based Daily Mail carried the following description, based on an interview with Gardiner:

“Gondwanaland belonged to the reptilian period, and was the home, no doubt, of monstrous scaly reptiles. ... The 10,000-ft high ridge, which runs south-west towards Socotra, was obviously a continuation of the Aravalli range (in Ajmere, India) and other mountains. There is a deep gully to the southeast, and it seems certain that it formed, in ages long ago, an extension of the bed of the River Indus. One can only deduce ... that the whole vast tract of land, and part of the Indus, went down head-first, so to speak, in a tremendous volcanic upheaval.”

This attractive map—accompanied by illustrations of typical Mesozoic flora and fauna—was subsequently reprinted in the Illustrated Weekly of India on July 29, 1934. It was reproduced, first in 1940 by Devaneyan Pavanar, and then in Tamil in 1975 in the government-published college textbook on Tamilnadu prehistory, in both instances without the identification of the submerged continent as Gondwanaland. Chandrababu’s republication in 1996 of the map, with its unambiguous identification of the now-vanished landmass as Kumari Continent, completes the process by which a paleo place-world of European science—Suess’s Gondwanaland—has been appropriated into Tamil regimes of remembering loss."

[Quelle: Sumathi Ramaswamy [சுமதி ராமஸ்வாமி]: The lost land of Lemuria : Fabulous geographies, catastrophic histories. -- Berkeley : Univ. of California Pr., 2004. -- 334 S. : Ill. -- S. 210f.. -- Fair use]

1996

Madras wird in Chennai (Tamil சென்னை) umbenannt

1999 (?)

Gründung der Karnataka Rakshana Vedike (KRV - Kannada  ಕರ್ನಾಟಕ ರಕ್ಷಣಾ ವೇದಿಕೆ - Karnāṭaka rakṣaṇā vēdike)


Abb.: ©Logo
[Fair use]

1998-07-28

Madras (Tamil மதராஸ் ; Telugu మద్రాస్): Ein älterer Mann in einem Interview:

“Don’t quote me on this, but Madras is a Telugu city. This was Rajaji’s [C. Rajagopalachari] slight of hand. In 1937 or 1938 he carried out a referendum in which the key question was ‘Do you speak Tamil?’ not ‘What language do you speak?’“

[Quelle: Mitchell, Lisa (1966 - ): Language, emotion, and politics in South India : The making of a mother tongue. -- Blommington : Indiana U.Pr., 2009. -- 281 S. : Ill. -- S. 90. -- Fair use]

1998-12-03

Tod von Mudiyarasan (Tamil முடியரசன் - Muṭiyaracaṉ, 1920 - 1998)

"The experiences of the poet Mudiyarasan resonate with those of Bharatidasan, his mentor and fellow Dravidianist. In his as yet unpublished reminiscences, Mudiyarasan writes that when he was a young man attending college, he heard a talk by Bharatidasan and was convinced that he too, like the famous poet, should write poems on the Tamil land, language, and community (Mudiyarasan n.d.: 151). And indeed, although not as prolific a poet or playwright as his famous mentor, beginning in the late 1940s, Mudiyarasan produced his share of verses on the beauties and glories of Tamil, which earned him the title of kaviyaracu [கவியரசு], “king of poets,” in 1966. Many of his poems, like Bharatidasan’s, promote the image of the ideal devotee as militant warrior; his most brilliant effort, the epic Punkoti [பூங்கொடி], even enlists the Tamil woman in such a role. Yet, like Bharatidasan, he too rarely took an active, public part in language protests; constrained by his job as a government employee, he could spread Tamil consciousness among young Tamilians only through subversive teaching and writing.

Born in 1920 into a poor family in a small village called Periyakulam in Madurai district, he tells us that his love for Tamil was fostered by his mother, who sang sweet lullabies to him, and by a maternal uncle who, although a shopkeeper by profession, had great interest in Tamil literature. He also recalls with affection that his interest in Tamil was paradoxically further stimulated by his first Tamil teacher in primary school, who was a Brahman (Mudiyarasan n.d.: 4-5). It is clear from his reminiscences that he was struck by the urgency of the Tamil cause, growing up in an environment in which he witnessed Tamil and its speakers being demeaned everywhere, often by fellow Tamilians who were Brahman. As a student in a local college in Mayilam, he was troubled when he heard his teacher offering his prayers in Sanskrit, and he was clearly offended when he saw that Brahman students were given privileged treatment (Mudiyarasan n.d.: 21). So in 1947, when he took up his first job as Tamil teacher in Muthialpet High School in Madras, he began his classes with the invocation, “Long live Tamil.” His students wrote “Long live Tamil” on the blackboard in their Sanskrit classroom, an act that, he notes, offended his Brahman colleagues (Mudiyarasan n.d.: 26-27). During the centenary celebrations of the high school, he was incensed when the invocation prayer was sung in Sanskrit; his anger only abated when his students spontaneously filled the hall with cries of “Long live Tamil” (Mudiyarasan n.d.: 31). In 1949, he moved to Karaikkudi to teach Tamil in another high school, a job that he held until his retirement in 1978; there he continued to keep vigil over Tamil. If any of his (Brahman) colleagues made fun of Tamil or Tamilians, he writes, he would pounce upon them fiercely, like a tiger (Mudiyarasan n.d.: 48).

It is apparent from his reminiscences that Mudiyarasan cherished his role as a Tamil teacher and as a molder of young minds. Although as a government employee he could not openly and publicly speak out against the state’s language policies without risking his job, he practiced his devotion to Tamil subversively by encouraging his students to take pride in their language and their heritage. He was not deterred by the hostility with which such efforts were greeted by some of his senior colleagues and headmasters, who were often Brahmans. In 1966, soon after his passionate poem Punkoti was proscribed, the then-Congress government tried to force him out of his job, and it was only the coming of the DMK [Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam] to power in 1967 that prevented this from happening (Mudiyarasan n.d.: 57). Mudiyarasan’s frustration at not being able to participate more publicly and militantly in Tamil devotional activities is apparent throughout his reminiscences. The fear of losing his job and concern over how he could take care of his large family under those circumstances clearly restrained his desire to openly espouse his Tamil devotion. Nevertheless, he proudly recalls that in 1949, his wife joined the anti-Hindi picketing launched by the women’s wing of the DK. During the anti-Hindi demonstrations of the previous year, he himself, along with some of his colleagues, had picketed the high school in which they taught, just for one day.

“We are Tamil teachers. Tamil is being harmed. We intend nothing more than showing our grief,”

Mudiyarasan told the authorities who questioned them (Mudiyarasan n.d.: 42-45). In the mid-1960s, when the protests against Hindi increased in intensity and scale, he recalls being accused of antinationalist and antigovernment activities in the classroom, and he was subjected to interrogation by state officials. He laments that Tamilians are their own enemies, and he writes that only when Tamil speakers appreciate the worth of their language would Tamilnadu improve (Mudiyarasan n.d.: 76-78).2

[Quelle: Sumathi Ramaswamy [சுமதி ராமஸ்வாமி]: Passions of tongue : Language devotion in Tamil India 1891 - 1970. -- Berkeley : Univ. of California Pr., 1997. -- S. 206ff. -- Fair use]

2001

Statistisches:

Census 2001. Reference date: 2001-03-01


Abb.: Sprachen ("Muttersprache"), Census 2001, in Tausend Sprechern
[Datenquelle: List of languages by number of native speakers in India - Wikipedia. -- Zugriff am 2021-11-02. -- CC-BY-SA]

Bei den Umfragen zum Census wurden 6.661 Sprachen als "Mother tongue" engegeben, Linguisten gruppieren die Sprechen in:

Die 1.635 "rationalized mother tongues" werden 122 verschiedenen "languages" zugeordnet.

Laut Third All India Education Survey werden:

[Datenquelle: J. C. Sharma: Language in India. -- Zugriff am 2021-11-02. -- Fair use]

2002-09

Hyderabad (Telugu హైదరాబాద్ ; Urdu حیدرآباد):  Einweihung einer  Statue von Telugu Talli  [తెలుగు తల్లి - Mutter Telugu] gegenüber dem Regierungsgebäude. Die Inschrift ist auf Englsch.

"In August 2002, fifty years after Potti Sriramulu’s death, a new statue of the goddess Telugu Talli [Mother Telugu], the personification of the Telugu language and emblem of the contemporary Telugu linguistic state of Andhra Pradesh, appeared in front of the Andhra Pradesh Secretariat in the state capital, Hyderabad. Today it can be seen standing just next to a similar statue of linguistic state martyr Potti Sriramulu [...]. Inaugurated by Andhra Pradesh chief minister Nara Chandrababu Naidu the following month, this 11.6-foot [3,50 m] statue replaced another statue of Telugu Talli commissioned by an earlier chief minister, N. T. Rama Rao, in the 1980s, that stood for almost two decades in another location nearby. In 1999 a contractor’s crew broke the original Telugu Talli statue in two while attempting to relocate it in order to make way for the construction of a new highway overpass, christened “Telugu Talli Flyover” at its opening in 2005. The city’s longest flyover, or overpass, it was initiated as part of the chief minister’s Swarna Andhra Pradesh [స్వర్ణ ఆంధ్ర ప్రదేశ్] [Golden Andhra Pradesh] program of development and modernization."
[Quelle: Mitchell, Lisa (1966 - ): Language, emotion, and politics in South India : The making of a mother tongue. -- Blommington : Indiana U.Pr., 2009. -- 281 S. : Ill. -- S. 91. -- Fair use]

Am 2002-11-01 (Staatsfeiertag) äußert sich die Telugu Zeitung వార్త (Vaartha) zur englischen Inschrift:

"As their way of marking the anniversary of Andhra Pradesh Formation Day on November 1, 2002, the front page of that day’s edition of the Telugu daily newspaper Vaartha carried a photo of the new statue, showing both Telugu Talli herself and the English inscription on her pedestal below. The English inscription identified her by name, identified her sponsor, the Municipal Corporation of Hyderabad, and listed the names of the officials responsible for her dedication and inauguration, with Chandrababu Naidu’s name featured most prominently. Alongside the photograph of the statue floats a large caption in Telugu script, asking

“Mother Telugu, where’s Telugu?”

Below, a longer caption elaborates:

This is the fate which has befallen the mother tongue [mātr̥bhāṣā [మాతృభాషా]] Telugu under the Telugu Desam government. Government leaders who have no knowledge of Telugu and who are telling us to learn English, have themselves composed even what’s on the stone slab of the Telugu Talli statue without Telugu. Seeing the miserable condition which has befallen her language, Telugu Talli is silently weeping."

[Quelle: Mitchell, Lisa (1966 - ): Language, emotion, and politics in South India : The making of a mother tongue. -- Blommington : Indiana U.Pr., 2009. -- 281 S. : Ill. -- S. 93. -- Fair use]

2003

Wiesbaden: Es erscheint:

Andronov, Michail S. [Андронов, Михаил Сергеевич] <1931 - 2009>: A comparative grammar of the Dravidian languages. -- Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2003. -- 334 S.-- (Beiträge zur Kenntnis südasiatischer Sprachen und Literature ; 7). -- ISBN 3-477-04455-1

 2004

Regierungsbeschluss, gewissen Sprachen den Status Classical Language zu verleihen.

Bis 2019 erhalten folgende Sprachen den Status Classical Language

2004 Tamil - தமிழ்
2005 Sanskrit - संस्कृत
2008 Telugu - తెలుగు
2008 Kannada - ಕನ್ನಡ
2013 Malayalam - മലയാളം
2014 Oriya - ଓଡ଼ିଆ

2005

Emami bringt das Hautbleichungsmittel für Männer "Fair and Handsome" auf den Markt


Abb.: Reklame für "Fair and Handsome"
[Fair use]


Abb.: Reklame für "Fair and Handsome"
[Fair use]

2006-05-26

Umbenennung von Pondicherry (Tamil பாண்டிச்சேரி) in Puducherry (Tamil புதுச்சேரி)

2006-11-01

Bangalore (Kannada ಬೆಂಗಳೂರು) wird in Bengaluru umbenannt

2007

Puducherry (Union Territory) (Tamil புதுச்சேரி): Tamil Thai Valthu (Tamil தமிழ்த்தாய் வாழ்த்து)  wird Staatshymne

2007-08-15 Independence Day

Es erscheint:

M. Karunanidhi (Tamil மு. கருணாநிதி, 1924 - 2018):  Autonomy for the States, federalism at the Centre. -- In: The Hindu. -- 2007-08-15

"On August 19, 1969, I announced on the floor of the Legislative Assembly the formation of a Three Member Committee with Dr. P. V. Rajamannar as Chairman and Dr. A.L. Mudaliar and P. Chandra Reddy as Members...

In its 1971 Election Manifesto, the DMK [Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam] announced:

‘Though the Constitution of India is described as a Federal one, the balance is more tilted towards the Centre and hence the States are not able to function freely in the administrative and financial spheres. Only such powers as are necessary for the Centre to preserve the strength of India should be assigned to the Centre and all the other powers should be left to the States without impairing the ideal of a strong India.’

The report of the Rajamannar Committee was received on May 27, 1971. On April 16, 1974, I moved a historic resolution in the Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly requesting the Central government to accept the views of the Tamil Nadu government on State autonomy and the recommendations of the Rajamannar Committee and proceed to effect immediate changes in the Constitution of India to establish a truly federal set-up. In 1974, Murasoli Maran, an inimitable ideologue of the DMK, brought out a brilliant treatise on State autonomy. He explained in simple and effective language decentralisation and federalism; devolution and provincial autonomy; the nature of the Indian Constitution; and the basis for State autonomy.

For the first time, in 1989, a National_Front coalition government headed by V. P. Singh, which included major regional parties like the DMK, took office at the Centre. Though short-lived, this government took certain steps to strengthen the federal principle. The Inter-State Council was constituted in 1990. The entry of regional parties in coalition governments at the Centre became a regular feature in 1996 with the formation of the United Front government and in all subsequent ones - and presently in the United Progressive Alliance government functioning under the esteemed guidance of Sonia Gandhi. The Left parties, which supported both the National Front Government in 1989 and the United Front government in 1996-1998 and the present UPA government, are strong supporters of the federal principle."

[Quelle: Sandhya Ravishankar (Tamil சந்தியா ரவிசங்கர்): Karunanidhi : A life in politics. -- HarperCollins, 2019. -- Kindle ed. -- Fair use]

2014-06-02

Telangana (Telugu: తెలంగాణ) (bisher ein Teil von Andhra Pradesh) wird ein eigenständiger Bundesstaat mit der Hauptstadt Hyderabad (Telugu: హైదరాబాద్ / Urdu: حیدر آباد).

2016-12-05

Chennai (Tamil சென்னை): Tod von Frau J. Jayalalithaa (Tamil ஜெ. ஜெயலலிதா - Je. Jeyalalitā, 1948 - 2016)

J. Jayalalithaa
 
5th Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu
In office
23 May 2015 
[1] – 5 December 2016
Governor
Preceded by O. Panneerselvam
Succeeded by O. Panneerselvam
Constituency Radhakrishnan Nagar
In office
16 May 2011 – 27 September 2014
Governor
Preceded by M. Karunanidhi
Succeeded by O. Panneerselvam
Constituency Srirangam
In office
2 March 2002 – 12 May 2006
Governor
Preceded by O. Panneerselvam
Succeeded by M. Karunanidhi
Constituency Andipatti
In office
14 May 2001 – 21 September 2001
Governor
Preceded by M. Karunanidhi
Succeeded by O. Panneerselvam
Constituency Did not contest
In office
24 June 1991 – 12 May 1996
Governor
Preceded by President's rule
Succeeded by M. Karunanidhi
Constituency Bargur
Member of Parliament, Rajya Sabha
In office
3 April 1984 – 28 January 1989
Leader of the House
Preceded by Sathyavani Muthu
Succeeded by Tha. Kiruttinan
Constituency Tamil Nadu
Leader of the Opposition in Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly
In office
29 May 2006 – 14 May 2011
Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi
Preceded by O. Panneerselvam
Succeeded by Vijayakant
Constituency Andipatti
In office
9 February 1989 – 30 November 1989
Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi
Preceded by O. Subramanian
Succeeded by S. R. Eradha
Constituency Bodinayakkanur
Member of Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly
In office
4 July 2015 – 5 December 2016
Chief Minister Herself
Preceded by P. Vetrivel
Succeeded by T. T. V. Dhinakaran
Constituency Radhakrishnan Nagar
In office
23 May 2011 – 27 September 2014
Chief Minister Herself
Preceded by M. Paranjothi
Succeeded by S. Valarmathi
Constituency Srirangam
In office
24 February 2002 – 14 May 2011
Chief Minister
Preceded by Thanga Tamil Selvan
Succeeded by Thanga Tamil Selvan
Constituency Andipatti
In office
1 July 1991 – 12 May 1996
Chief Minister Herself
Preceded by K. R. Rajendran
Succeeded by E. G. Sugavanam
Constituency Bargur
In office
6 February 1989 – 30 January 1991
Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi
Preceded by K. S. M. Ramachandran
Succeeded by V. Panneerselvam
Constituency Bodinayakkanur
General Secretary of the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam
In office
9 February 1989 – 5 December 2016
Inaugural Holder M. G. Ramachandran
Preceded by V. R. Nedunchezhiyan
Succeeded by position abolished
Propaganda Secretary of the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam
In office
1983–1984
Party President M. G. Ramachandran
General Secretary P. U. Shanmugam
Personal details
Born Jayaram Jayalalitha


24 February 1948
MelukoteMysore StateDominion of India
(present day KarnatakaIndia)

Died 5 December 2016 (aged 68)
ChennaiTamil NaduIndia
Cause of death Cardiac Arrest
Resting place Puratchi Thalaivi Jayalalithaa Ninaividam
Political party All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam
Relatives Deepa Jayakumar (niece)
Residence Veda Nilayam
81, Poes Garden, Chennai,
Tamil NaduIndia
Alma mater
Profession
  • Film actress
  • writer
  • politician
  • philanthropist
Awards
Signature  
Nickname(s) Puratchi ThalaiviThanga TharagaiKalai SelviAmma

"‘Film News' Anandan, who wrote for Film News and later worked as Jayalalithaa’s public relations officer (PRO), recounts an incident in Mysore that marked Jayalalithaa as remarkably fearless even when she was barely sixteen.

‘She belonged to the Mandiam Iyengar community that hailed from Karnataka. But in an article that appeared in a magazine she was quoted as saying,

“I am a Tamilian. My mother belongs to Srirangam.”

That angered the Kannadigas in Karnataka who believed her to be a Kannadiga. Because of the threats she received she cancelled her scheduled dance programme at the Dasara arts festival in Mysore. Two months later, during the shooting of director Panthulu’s film at the Chamundi studios in Mysore, the organizer of the Dasara arts festival heard she was there, and decided to confront her. The studio manager got news that about a hundred protesters were marching towards the studio to beat up Jayalalithaa. So he ordered the gates to be locked. But the hooligans jumped over the gates and entered with lathis in their hands shouting in Kannada:

“Where is the bitch?”

They barged in, knocking down the guards and journalists standing at the door. Panthulu spoke to them in Kannada and pleaded with them to go away. But they demanded that Jayalalithaa should say sorry for having said that she was not a Kannadiga. Jayalalithaa was neither ruffled nor afraid. She looked straight at them and said in chaste Kannada,

“I have not said anything wrong. Why should I apologize? I am a Tamilian and not a Kannadiga!”

'By then the police entered and pacified the protesters and took them away. That Kannadigas attempted to kill Jayalalithaa hit the headlines in all Tamil papers.’"

[Quelle: Vaasanthi [Tamil  வாஸந்தி]: Amma : Jayalalithaa's journey from movie star to political queen. -- New Delhi : Juggernaut, 2016. -- 200 S. -- Kindle ed. -- Fair use]

"The deification of the ‘Revolutionary Leader’ - Puratchithalaivi [Tamil புரட்சித்தலைவி] as she was now called - was soon fully under way. Party members started tattooing Jayalalithaa’s image on their bodies. Every announcement, every new project and scheme became her personal edict, and came accompanied by her outsize photograph. The government of Tamil Nadu had become the government of one person - Jayalalithaa. Towering cutouts of Jayalalithaa greeted her wherever she went. A carpet of flowers, a few inches thick, was laid for her when she went to inaugurate the de-silting of a temple tank in Madras. Posters appeared, depicting her as Durga, the goddess Meenakshi, even the Immaculate Virgin Mary."

[Quelle: Vaasanthi [Tamil  வாஸந்தி]: Amma : Jayalalithaa's journey from movie star to political queen. -- New Delhi : Juggernaut, 2016. -- 200 S. -- Kindle ed. -- Fair use]


Abb.: Wahlplakate
[Foto: Preminda Jacob. -- Fair use]


Abb.: Wahlplakat, 2014
[Foto: Preminda Jacob. -- Fair use]

"The stars, she was told, could be manipulated or cajoled to change one’s fate. Even numbers, said the numerologists, could distract the hand of fate. Nine is your lucky number, they had told her. So an ‘a’ was added to her name and she became Jayalalithaa. Yet another astrologer said green was her auspicious colour. When she took to wearing green, after she was back in power, even the officialdom went on a green spree, turning everything from ceilings to carpets, from pens to ribbons at public functions, to green. Women employees wore saris in different shades of green."

[Quelle: Vaasanthi [Tamil  வாஸந்தி]: Amma : Jayalalithaa's journey from movie star to political queen. -- New Delhi : Juggernaut, 2016. -- 200 S. -- Kindle ed. -- Fair use]

"With admirable determination in the last two years of her term she concentrated on good governance, and demonstrated her ability as an administrator. She took up rainwater harvesting seriously and issued an order that within two months all residents in Chennai should install harvesting tanks. To curb the increasing number of deaths from consumption of illicit spurious liquor, she decided that the government would run liquor shops - TASMACs - providing alcohol at cheap rates, a scheme that also gave employment to thousands of unemployed graduates and filled the government coffers."

[Quelle: Vaasanthi [Tamil  வாஸந்தி]: Amma : Jayalalithaa's journey from movie star to political queen. -- New Delhi : Juggernaut, 2016. -- 200 S. -- Kindle ed. -- Fair use]

2018-06-25

Der Informations-Minister von Tamil Nadu (Tamil: தமிழ் நாடு) Kadambur Raju (Tamil: கடம்பூர் சி. ராஜு, 1959 -) kündigt an, dass 15 Millionen Rupien (Rs 1.5 crore) für den Bau des Bharat Mata Mandirs von der Regierung zur Verfügung gestellt werden. Der Grundstein für den "Mutter-Indien-Tempel" in Papparapatti (Tamil பாப்பாரப்பட்டி) im Distrikt Dahrmapuri (Tamil: தர்மபுரி மாவட்டம்) war schon 1923-06-22 auf Betreiben vom Freihheitskämpfer Subramania Siva (Tamil:  சுப்பிரமணிய சிவா, 1884 - 1925) gelegt worden. Nach seinem Tod ging die Arbeit nicht weiter.

Der Tamil Maanila Congress Führer BS Gnanadesikan (Tamil: பி. எஸ். ஞானதேசிகன்,  1949 - kommentiert:

"“Bharat Mata Mandir is not a religious symbol. It is a symbol of national unity. For anyone who feels proud of India, this temple will be a place to visit.”

Der Dichter

" Subramania Bharati [ Chinnaswami Subramania Bharati, Tamil: சின்னசுவாமி சுப்பிரமணிய பாரதி, 1882-1921] sought to raise Bharat Mata to the level of Shiva and Vishnu so that people adore the nation in the form of mother. With that intent he composed and sang ‘Bharata Mata Thirupalli Ezhuchi’. The five Tamil poems are in tune with the wake up hymn recited in Shiva/Vishnu temples in Tamil Nadu."

"It is well known that thousands of daily RSS Shakhas nationwide conclude with the mantra “Bharat Mata Ki jai”. RSS keeps growing from strength to strength and the RSS Sarsanghachalak Shri Mohan Bhagwat advised on March 3, 2016: “Now the time has come when we have to tell the new generation to chant ‘Bharat Mata Ki Jai’. It should be real, spontaneous.”Old timers in Tamil Nadu who were witness to the pre 1947 freedom struggle, used to exclaim, “In free India, we are once again elated to hear “Vande Mataram” and “Bharat Mata Ki Jai” only at the gatherings of Swayamsevaks”. That goes to prove how Bharat Mata always inspires the people of Bharat to dedicate their lives to the motherland. RSS inspired organisations such as the Hindu Munnani, Samskrita Bharati, etc., hold solemn Bharat Mata poojas frequently to offer an opportunity to the general public to worship mother India."

Quelle: A temple for Bharat Mata. - www.organiser.org/Encyc/2018/7/4/Temple-for-Bharat-Mata.amp.html?__twitter_impression=true  - Fair use. -  Zugriff am 2018-07-06

 

2018-08-07

Chennai (Tamil சென்னை): Tod von M._Karunanidhi (Tamil மு. கருணாநிதி - Mu. Karuṇāniti, 1924 - 2018)

Seine Mutter, Anjugam Ammaiyar, ist eine Devadasi

M. Karunanidhi
 
2nd Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu
In office
13 May 2006 – 15 May 2011
Governor Surjit Singh Barnala (2006-2011)
Deputy M. K. Stalin (2009–2011)
Preceded by J. Jayalalithaa
Succeeded by J. Jayalalithaa
Constituency Chepauk
In office
13 May 1996 – 13 May 2001
Governor Marri Chenna Reddy (1996)
Krishan Kant (Addition Charge) (1996-1997)
M. Fathima Beevi (1997-2001)
Preceded by J. Jayalalithaa
Succeeded by J. Jayalalithaa
Constituency Chepauk
In office
27 January 1989 – 30 January 1991
Governor P. C. Alexander (1989-1990)
Surjit Singh Barnala (1990-1991)
Preceded by President's rule
Succeeded by President's rule
Constituency Chennai Harbour
In office
10 February 1969 – 31 January 1976
Governor Ujjal Singh (1969-1971)
Kodardas Kalidas Shah (1971-1976)
Preceded by V. R. Nedunchezhiyan (Acting)
Succeeded by President's rule
Constituency Saidapet
Leader of the Opposition in Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly
In office
25 July 1977 – 18 August 1983
Chief Minister M. G. Ramachandran
Preceded by R. Ponnappan Nadar
Succeeded by K. S. G. Haja Shareef
Constituency Anna Nagar
President of Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam
In office
27 July 1969 – 7 August 2018
Preceded by position established
Succeeded by M. K. Stalin
Member of the Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly
In office
27 January 1989 – 7 August 2018
Constituency Harbour (1989-1996)
Chepauk (1996-2011)
Thiruvarur (2011-2018)
In office
1 April 1957 – 18 August 1983
Constituency Kulithalai (1957-1962)
Thanjavur (1962-1967)
Saidapet (1967-1977)
Anna Nagar (1977-1983)
Member of the Tamil Nadu Legislative Council
In office
30 March 1984[1] – 1 November 1986[2]
Chief Minister M. G. Ramachandran
Preceded by K. A. Krishnasway
Succeeded by position abolished
Personal details
Born Muthuvel Dakshinamurthy


3 June 1924
ThirukuvalaiMadras PresidencyBritish India
(present-day Tamil Nadu, India)

Died 7 August 2018 (aged 94)[3]
ChennaiTamil Nadu, India
Resting place Kalaignar Karunanidhi Ninaividam
Political party Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam
Other political
affiliations
Justice PartyDravidar Kazhagam (before 1949)
Spouse(s)
  • Padmavathi Ammal

    (m. 1944; died 1948)
     

    Dayalu Ammal

     

    (m. 1948)​
     

    Rajathi Ammal

     

    (m. 1966)​
Children 6, including M. K. MuthuM. K. AlagiriM. K. Stalin and Kanimozhi Karunanidhi
Relatives Karunanidhi family
Residence
Awards Honorary Doctorate (1971)
Signature  
Website kalaignar.dmk.in
En uyirinum melana anbu udan pirappukkale
("My beloved brothers who are beyond my life")

"Increasingly from the 1930s on, especially as Dravidianist sentiments began to dominate the devotional community, the kavinar [கவிஞர்] (poet) and the arinar [அறிஞர்] (scholar) had to make room for a new kind of devotee, the maravar [மறவர்] (warrior), who fiercely fought in the glorious and honorable battle for liberating Tamiḻttāy [தமிழ்த்தாய் = Mutter Tamil]. Among the many devotees who so present themselves, perhaps none is as spectacular as Muthuvel Karunanidhi. His life, he writes, is a “battle,” and he is the “warrior” who bravely and fearlessly takes it on (Karunanidhi 1989: 7). His reminiscences are sprinkled with numerous allusions to the Cankam past, and there are repeated comparisons between his own efforts for the Tamil cause and the heroic deeds of ancient Tamil warriors. Like those ancient maravars who battled to maintain their honor, he writes that he, too, was prepared to battle—and had indeed done so—to maintain the honor of Tamil and the well-being of its speakers. The four most memorable days of his life, he recalls, are

  • the day he was born;

  • the day he got married;

  • the day he met his beloved leader, Annadurai;

  • and, finally, the day he was thrown into prison for the first time during “the battle to protect [his] language” (Karunanidhi 1989: 15).

Born in 1924 into a working-class family in the small village of Thirukkuvalai near Tiruvarur in Tanjavur district, Karunanidhi’s involvement in the Tamil cause began very early, when he was in high school. He was fourteen when the first wave of anti-Hindi protests began to sweep across the Presidency in the late 1930s, and he recalls being impressed with the Tamilian Brigade that marched from Tiruchirappalli to Madras in 1938 and with young men like Dhalamutthu [தாலமுத்து, 1925 - 1939], Natarajan [இல. நடராசன், 1919 - 1939], and Stalin Jegadeesan [ஸ்டாலின் ஜெகதீசன்] who had sacrificed themselves in the battle against Hindi. Inspired by their deeds, he organized his fellow students and marched every evening through the streets of Tiruvarur carrying the Tamil banner and shouting anti-Hindi slogans. The student procession was headed by a cart bearing a giant poster of Tamilttay being stabbed by Rajagopalachari. The students chanted a verse that young Karunanidhi himself had composed:

 “Let us all gather together and go to war!
Let us chase away and drive back that she-devil, Hindi!” (Karunanidhi 1989: 43-44).

One day during their daily march, the students encountered their Hindi teacher. Karunanidhi handed him a pamphlet of anti-Hindi songs, raised the Tamil banner, and shouted,

“Let Hindi die! Long live Tamil!”

He writes that even though he was just a teenager, and ought to have been scared about confronting his teacher in this way, he felt no fear for his

“blood and [his] breath pulse[d] with Tamil” (Karunanidhi 1989: 42-46).

His participation in these anti-Hindi protests laid the foundation for his full-scale involvement in politics. Soon after, he dropped out of high school, became actively involved in the youth wing of the Dravidian movement, and contributed essays on rationalism, atheism, and other such issues to various party newspapers. In 1942, he founded his own newspaper, the Muracoli [முரசொலி], which continues to be published to this day; and by the early 1950s, he was writing scripts for plays and movies that propagated the ideals of the movement. Later in his life he wrote,

“Even if I have a mother and father, wives and children and siblings, and whether they stay with me or part from me, it is the [Dravidian] movement that I think of as my family, and I think of myself as part of it” (Karunanidhi 1987b: 1).

He recalls that during several crucial moments in his life, such as the deaths of his father and of his first wife, he was off making speeches for the movement rather than at their side (Karunanidhi 1989: 96, 107). He observes (with some amusement) that when he got married the second time, his wedding took place on 15 September 1948—the same day that Ramasami had called for a renewed protest against Hindi. Friends and relatives had gathered at Karunanidhi’s home. He himself was standing at the entrance, greeting his guests, when an anti-Hindi procession went by on its way to picket the local school. The processors were shouting anti-Hindi slogans:

 “Let Hindi die! May Tamil live!”

In the roar of these slogans, he notes, the music of his wedding party could hardly be heard. He, too, joined the procession, and went off to picket the nearby school. Fortunately, he writes, he was not arrested on that day and returned home to marry his bride, who had been waiting patiently through all this (Karunanidhi 1989: 113-15).

From the early 1950s, as a key member of the newly formed DMK [Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam], Karunanidhi began to participate enthusiastically in various protests launched by that party, picketing shops run by North Indian merchants and tarring over Hindi names on public billboards. He gained early fame in 1953 when he led a group of DMK volunteers in a bid to change the name of the industrial town called Dalmiapuram to its Tamil original, Kallakudi. His narration of this event offers a clear illustration of Karunanidhi’s efforts to capitalize on themes drawn from ancient heroic poetry. He writes that he and twenty-four others set out on that fateful day.

“Look, the herd of Tamil lions has set out to cast aside the crown of dishonor that sits on our Tamilttay’s head.. . . We ran towards our mother. We erased the name Dalmiapuram. We painted on the name Kallakudi.”

Then, over the protests of police officials who had gathered there, he and his fellow “warriors” laid themselves down on the railroad tracks as they heard the train approaching:

“One last time, I looked up at the sky! I looked around at Kallakudi; I looked to my heart’s content at Tamilttay who nurtured me. I looked at all those standing around me ... I closed my eyes. I heard the sound of the train approaching. My heart resounded with the words, ‘May Tamil live long!”’

Several men lost their lives or were injured at Kallakudi, and Karunanidhi himself was sentenced to six months in prison.

“We received our reward for fighting for the honor of Tamilians,” he concludes (Karunanidhi 1989: 196-214).30

This is not the only time Karunanidhi went to prison in the battle to save the honor of his language and his fellow speakers; he was imprisoned once again in 1965 for his role in the anti-Hindi protests of that year. He writes in the style of the maravar devotee,

“I will have no greater joy than if I die on the battlefield, opposing Hindi” (Karunanidhi 1989: 476).

And although he has held several public and political offices—as a member of the Legislative Assembly from 1957; as a cabinet minister in the first DMK government in 1967; and then as chief minister of the state from 1969 to 1976, 1989 to 1991, and most recently beginning in May 1996—he clearly takes pride in his persona as a “warrior” for Tamil, as someone who has been ready to put his body on the line for his fellow speakers of Tamil. As he declared later in life, in a verse that admirably captures his flamboyant presentation of self:

O Tamilians! O Tamilians!
If you throw me into the ocean, I will float on it as a raft; you may climb aboard and ride the waves.
If you throw me into the flames of a fire, I will be the burning log; you can use me in your hearth and cook your meals.
If you dash me against the rocks, I will break into the flakes of a coconut; you can pick these up and eat them, and rejoice.

(Karunanidhi 1987b: 229)"

[Quelle: Sumathi Ramaswamy [சுமதி ராமஸ்வாமி]: Passions of tongue : Language devotion in Tamil India 1891 - 1970. -- Berkeley : Univ. of California Pr., 1997. -- S. 224 - 227. -- Fair use]

"Karunanidhi may have faced condescension from the Indian English media but he has always been loved by the Tamil media. The English media looks down on him as a crass local leader who does not speak any language other than Tamil. His strident demands for state autonomy in the 1970s and 1980s were viewed as secessionist, fuelling more hatred. His reviling of Brahmins, his deliberate antagonism to the Hindu religious structure and his anti-Hindi stance could never endear him to the stars of English journalism in the north. Karunanidhi’s rival J. Jayalalithaa of the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) was the darling instead. A fair beauty charismatic and able to hold her own in English and Hindi, Karunanidhi’s nemesis would get far more attention and sympathy from Delhi.

And yet it was Karunanidhi, in large part, who was instrumental in making Tamil Nadu one of the best performing states in terms of all social and economic indicators. It was under his leadership that flagship schemes were devised that were then followed by other states across the country. It was his understanding of the problems of the people on the ground that helped shape policy and address the critical issues of malnutrition, unemployment, caste inequities and women’s rights.

It was also Karunanidhi who ushered in the ‘freebie culture’ in the state in 2006 with his promise of free colour TVs to the BPL (Below Poverty Line) populace if voted to power. In an election without a burning issue, the people gave him the mandate. Today, Tamil Nadu’s economy is tottering on the brink of collapse as his rivals and successors have overdone his freebie strategy. Apart from essentials such as rice, the state now provides bizarre freebies - free gold for thaali [தாலி] (mangalsutra) for poor brides, free mixers and grinders, free milch cows and goats and heavily subsidized scooters for women, among others.

Karunanidhi would also earn notoriety for the structured, efficient, large-scale bribing of voters in 2009, when his elder son M. K. Alagiri implemented what is now known as the ‘Thirumangalam formula’ with grand success. It was reported that Rs 500 per vote distributed systematically by the DMK [Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam] in the Tirumangalam by-election in Madurai won them the seat. Currency notes along with a printed rising sun symbol found their way into newspapers delivered at homes in the morning, were handed out outside temples and ceremoniously delivered door to door by the DMK cadre with folded hands, respectfully asking for votes.

There is much amusement among journalists who track Dravidian politics in Tamil Nadu over a Tamil saying - DMK kodu pohtta, AIADMK roadu pohduvaanga. This translates to -if the DMK draws a line, the AIADMK will lay a road. It means what the DMK does the AIADMK perfects.

The Thirumangalam formula was subsequently perfected by the AIADMK, and Tamil Nadu has faced the ignominy of having elections to three seats cancelled by the Election Commission of India following the seizure of large amounts of cash meant for distribution to voters, in Thanjavur, Aravakurichi and R. K. Nagar - Wikipedia in 2016 and 2017.

It was also Karunanidhi who took an ideological stand against Indira Gandhi’s Emergency in 1975, risking arrest and facing dismissal of his government. He was, in fact, the only leader in Tamil Nadu to oppose the Emergency tooth and nail.

It was Karunanidhi who led the support for the Mandal reforms. It was his clarion call that brought thousands of youth to the streets to protest the imposition of Hindi on a proud Tamil state. It was his unrelenting pressure on the Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi governments that forced India to arm and train the rebel LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) and send a peacekeeping force to Sri Lanka.

It was said that the LTTE had a free run in Tamil Nadu under the DMK, eventually resulting in the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi in May 1991.

On 3 June 2017, Karunanidhi, even in his absence, stitched together an important front, one that would take on the ideological right-wing forces in India. His ninety-third birthday was the date chosen for the leaders of all parties opposed to the BJP [Bharatiya Janata Party] and its allies to come together for the first time on a public platform and stand with arms linked. Rahul Gandhi of the Congress, Nitish Kumar of the Janata Dal (United), Derek O'Brien of the Trinamool Congress, Omar Abdullah of the National Conference, Majeed Memon of the Nationalist Congress Party, Sitaram Yechury of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), and D. Raja and Sudhakar Reddy of the Communist Party of India were all present at the grand event at Chennai’s YMCA Ground in Royapettah. This was the national Opposition’s first show of strength since the Bharatiya Janata Party romped home with a huge majority in the Lok Sabha elections of 2014.

In their praise of Karunanidhi’s commitment to social justice and equality and his unwavering support for minorities and the underprivileged, political leaders from Kashmir to Kerala were effusive. He was, in effect, their leader too, respected and admired across the country.

In all of this, Karunanidhi was literally mute. The tracheostomy tube still in his neck did not allow him to speak. Although he was helped to sit in his wheelchair and meet a few select leaders of his own party as well as Rahul Gandhi, visitors came away in grief. Their leader was not likely to lead

them again. His face had taken on a dark hue due to over eight months of ill health and being bedridden. And yet he had formed the front."

[Quelle: Sandhya Ravishankar (Tamil சந்தியா ரவிசங்கர்): Karunanidhi : A life in politics. -- HarperCollins, 2019. -- Kindle ed. -- Fair use]

2021-04-06

2021 Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly election

2021 Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly election

← 2016 6 April 2021 2027 →

All 234 elected seats in the Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly
118 seats needed for a majority
Turnout 72.81% (Decrease 2.00%)[1][2]
     
Leader M. K. Stalin Edappadi K. Palaniswami
Party DMK AIADMK
Alliance SPA[3] NDA[4]
Leader since 2018 2017
Leader's seat Kolathur Edappadi
Seats won 159 75
Seat change Increase61 Decrease61
Popular vote 20,982,009 18,099,444
Percentage 45.7% 39.7%

 

Chief Minister before election
 

Edappadi K. Palaniswami
AIADMK

DMK ELECTION MANIFESTO 2021 - ENGLISH:

"State Rights

1.    DMK will continue to fight for restoration of the lost rights of the state.

2.    Efforts will be taken to remove ‘Education’ from ‘Concurrent List’ and restore it to ‘State List’

3.    DMK in its efforts to oppose the National Education Policy introduced by the BJP Government will formulate a separate State Education Policy for Tamil Nadu. To achieve this goal, a high-level committee comprising various educationists and other experts will be established.

Language Policy

4.    DMK will fight against Hindi imposition as it had in the past. As articulated by Dr. APJ Abdu Kalam during the parliamentary debate held in 2004, DMK will continue to urge the Union Govt to take necessary steps to legally declare all existing state languages as official languages of India including Tamil. This will be an effort to accomplish the resolution made during the 1996 Trichy Conference. Until this proposal is brought to effect, DMK will urge the Central Government to conduct all state level competitive examinations including govt jobs, in the official languages of the respective States.

Tamil language in Central govt Offices

5.    DMK will urge Tamil shall to be declared as co-official language in all central government offices including firms, and national banks located in Tamil Nadu. To achieve this, DMK will push the Central Government to bring an amendment under Article 343 of the Constitution of India.

Tamil as language of the Madras High Court

6.    To reduce the burden of cases before the Supreme Court of India, it has been petitioned before the SC to consider the case to establish regional branches (Court of Appeal). The matter is pending before the Constitutional Bench. DMK will urge the Central Government to expedite this process and propel the Central govt to construct such courts in Tamil Nadu for the Southern Region

Elevating the status of Tamil as Classical language

7.    DMK will take efforts to revive the Central Institute of Classical Tamil, Chennai established under Kalaignar’s regime, and to make it an autonomous institution. Similarly, DMK will urge the Central Govt. to declare Thirukkural as the National Textbook.

8.    DMK will take necessary steps to institute Tamil Chairs in International Universities

9.    Semmozhi Poonga’ in Anna Salai will be refurbished. Semmozhi Park will be set up in all Municipal Corporations.

10. Some of the important and world-famous books will be translated in Tamil and similarly Classic Tamil books will be translated in other languages

11. Usage of appropriate and standardised format of Tamil script in different media will be implemented through the necessary legislative action.

Tamil Official Language Section

12. To improve the usage of Tamil language across all departments starting from Secretariat (state level) to Councillor Office (ward level), a separate wing to develop Tamil as official language will be established

Eelam Tamil’s Welfare

13. Urge the Central govt to appeal to the international community to constitute an independent judicial body to investigate various human rights violations, war crimes, genocides faced by Sri Lanka

14. Urge the Central Govt to appeal to the United Nations to make necessary intervention to check the political abuse against Eelam Tamils. To advice the current Govt of Sri Lanka to proceed with a referendum, taking into consideration the will of the people while making amendments in its Constitution so that Eelam Tamils can have equal civil and political rights.

Citizenship for Eelam Tamils

15. Many thousands of Tamil refugees fled from Sri Lanka including the refugees under 1964 SastrySrimavo Bandaranayake agreement, and till date live in the refugee camps which was supposed to be a makeshift arrangement

16. Urge the Central Govt to make necessary laws to grant Indian citizenship to the Tamil refugees from Sri Lanka that have been living in refugee camps for the last 30 years or so, and to also make arrangements for those willing to return to Sri Lanka

17. A Non-Resident Tamils Department will be created by Government of Tamil Nadu to look after the well-being of Tamils living abroad

Administrative Reforms (Lok Ayukta)

[...]

Corruption-free Administration

[...]

Probing Former Chief Minister Jayalalithaa’s death

[...]

Transparent District Administration

[...]

Tamil Nadu Government Debt

[...]

Reformation of PSU

[...].

Agriculture and Farmer Welfare

[...]

Minimum Support Price for all food products

[...]

100 day NREGA will be extended to 150 days

[...]

Subsidy for poor farmers to procure electric motors

[...]

Subsidies to Women in Agriculture

[...]

Ban on genetic modification technology

[...]

Horticultural University in Krishnagiri

[...]

Incentivising programme for palm jaggery production

[...]

Additional Support Price for Paddy and sugarcane

[...]

Agricultural Co-operative Societies to purchase farm machineries and equipments under a govt Guarantee scheme

[...]

Turmeric Research Institute Erode

[...]

Special financial assistance to incentivise date palm tree in Tuticorin, Vellore, Karur and Dharmapuri districts

[...]

Ban on borewells in hilly regions

[...]

Water Management

[...]

Fishermen Welfare

[...]

Handloom Weavers Welfare

[...]

Labour Welfare

[...]

Ban on NEET Examination

[...]

Free of cost sanitary napkins for government school and college students

[...]

School Education

[...]

100% literacy in Tamil Nadu

[...]

Employment

[...]

Employment and Skill Training

[...]

Right to Skill Training Act

[...]

5.50 lakh jobs in Government Departments

[...]

Conservation of Public Trusts and Charities- employment opportunities for 25000

[...]

Industrial Growth

[...]

New Ministry for Mines and Minerals

[...]

Industrial Waste treatment Facility

[...]

Youth Welfare

[...]

Electricity

[...]

[...]

Public Distribution System

[...]

Tourism

[...]

Women Welfare

[...]

Anjugam Ammaiyar Ninaivu Intercaste Marriage Assistance Scheme

[...]

Welfare of Backward and Most Backward Communities

[...]

Welfare of Persons with Disabilities (PWD)

[...]

Trader’s Welfare

[...]

Review of increased rents in municipality shops

[...]

Equal Wage for Equal Employment

[...]

Reservation

[...]

Environment

[...]

Governance

[...]

Drinking Water

[...]

Financial Assistance to Village Temple Priests

[...]

Consecration of Temples

[...]

Appointment of Temple priests

[...]nt.

Pilgrimage Subsidies

[...]

Road Traffic

429. Expedite the VikravandiKumbakonam-Thanjavur 4 lane highway project sanctioned by National Highway Commission. 

430. Conversion of 2 lane and 4 lane roads to 4 lane and 6 lane roads.

431. To reduce traffic congestion in the state, bypass roads will be constructed in cities with most traffic.

432. Elevated Highway will be constructed in Chennai, Kovai, Madurai, Trichy and Nellai to reduce traffic congestion.

433. Steps will be taken to complete the Chennai- Kanyakumari East Coast Road project.

434.  DMK will urge the Central Govt to approve the pending 6 lane Highway project between Chennai-Kanyakumari that was introduced during DMK regime.

435. To fulfil the growing transportation needs of commuters, integrated bus stands at a central location aiding easy access will be established in major cities with advanced facilities. Also, bypass roads will be constructed to connect to the highways. 

[...]

Rail Traffic

[...]

Art and Culture

449. To set up a Museum of Tamil History and Culture in Sivagangai to create awareness and offer teachings about the historic Tamil civilisation.

450. Folk arts will be featured in Government events, included in school syllabus and an annual festival to feature folk arts will be conducted by the government to protect the arts and artists. 

451. 60% of the welfare boards constituted by DMK have not been paid any attention in the present ADMK period, including the folk artists welfare board. DMK will ensure that these artists are issued identity cards and pensions will be provided to them. Steps will be taken to protect these arts.

452. Pongal festival will be celebrated as a grand folk arts and sports extravaganza with competitions and prize distribution events in all districts in the state.

Dravidian Movement Dheerargal Kottam

453.  A Dravidian Movement Dheerargal Kottam will be constructed in Chennai in honor of tall leaders of the Dravidian movement including Dr C Natesanar, Sir P TheyagarayarDr TM Nair who have fought for social justice and equality for all in our state, because of which we have developed as one of the top states in India. 

454. Statues of Pollan, the brave commander of Theeran Chinnamalai and Kuyili who bravely sacrificed her life in our fight for freedom will be erected in Erode and Sivagangai respectively.

455. Statues of the valorous Veerapandiya Kattabomman and Marudhu brothers will be erected in Chennai.

456. A memorial hall will be constructed in honor of P Subbarayan, the first Tamil Chief Minister of Madras presidency in Namakkal. He was a great philanthropist who donated most of his wealth for the upliftment of the poor. He was a tall leader of the state and voiced for the state’s rights in the Indian Parliament as a Member of Parliament.

457. A statue of Munsiff of Mayuram Vedhanayagam Pillai who wrote the first Tamil novel will be erected in Mayiladuthurai.

[...]

Disaster Management

[...]

Rural Development

[...]

Welfare of Cattle

[...]

Tamil language mandatory in Schools

[...]

Release of 7 convicts in Rajiv Gandhi Murder Case

[...]

Milk Price

[...]"

[Quelle: DMK ELECTION MANIFESTO 2021 - ENGLISH. -- ZUgriff am 2021-10-26. -- Fair use]

Zurück zu: Die drawidische Anti-Brahmanen/Anti-Sanskrit-Bewegung. -- URL: http://www.payer.de/indienchronik/drawid.htm